Tag Archives: Fish

Ice Fishing

Over the last couple weeks I’ve purchased all the ice fishing gear I will need to catch fish over the ice, aka hard water. I got a nordic legend auger/ice house combo from menards. Highly recommend this for the budget conscious person. It was vastly cheaper than anything out there, and it seems to perform just fine.

Today I met a new fishing friend, we will call him D. Hopefully a long future of fishing is together for us. We seem to have many overlapping hobbies.

I’ve been trying to find the fish all week, but haven’t had much luck. Read fishing reports and got out there and just tried stuff. Today changed that though, I was fishing the west end of Lake Francis, which is east of Madison Lake (east of Mankato). The GPS coordinates for approximate location are 44.210378, -93.723875. I set down a point on the Striker as FRA2.

Fished with pink sparkle top, yellow dot small jig, and a glowing yellow, with orange dot jig. The first being the most successful, and the later working better once the sun started getting lower on the horizon.

Caught about 30 bluegill, a couple small pumpkinseeds, and a small pike.

pumpkinseed

pike

Photographic Guide to Fishes of the Red River Basin

While I was attending Minnesota State University: Moorhead (MSUM), one of my summer projects was seining fish with Linda Fuselier. We spent many hours in the field gathering specimens and identifying them. It was a great experience and the guide may still be available for sale at the Buffalo River Science Center just east of Moorhead, MN.

Here is the culmination of that work: Fish Field Guide 

Seining

One of the best pieces of survey equipment I’ve used is the seine. I enjoy it so much because even the most dull stream is full of aquatic invertebrates and small fishes. The piece of equipment is composed of two long poles with a net strung between them. On the top side of the net there were floats, and on the bottom were weights.

Seining for a research project at MSUM
Seining at the Buffalo River Science Center for a research project at MSUM

When I was working on creating a photographic guide to the fishes of the Buffalo River, a dear professor and I went out and seined many streams and ponds in the Buffalo River basin. If you have never tried it, it’s a great way to sample aquatic systems. It pulls up all of the macro invertebrates and the smallest fishes.

buffaloriver1
Iowa Darter
buffaloriver
Goldeye