Today marked the first day of service for our 40v Strike Master auger.
When I first started ice fishing, I bought a manual crank auger and knew no different. I grew up in the concrete jungle and ice fishing was a new way to go fishing in the winter, so I tried it with minimal gear and minimal success.
Over the years I have owned a few different augers and learned a few things. I hit bottom once and had to buy new blades for my auger because it would not cut anymore. Then, I bought a 4 inch auger for kokanee fishing and it worked like a charm. I still like using it when the kokanee are deep, because once in the hole they can not get turned around and have to swim up and out.
I’ll admit, I skipped the gas auger phase of my ice fishing experience and I don’t feel like I missed anything other than the ease of drilling multiple holes without breaking a sweat. I went fishing twice with people who owned gas augers and thought “wow, I need one of those.” The benefit to a power auger is the ability to drill more than one hole effortlessly and quickly.
Drilling one or two holes manually is normally not a big deal, except when drilling holes when the family comes or when I want to explore a lake.
While my out of shape body thanks the addition of an electric drill to my ice fishing gear, I still have to drag the extra weight on to the ice so that I can use it. My latest thought from today was, “now it’s time for a second sled.”
My top heavy sled has become heavier and is more susceptible to tipping. The added weight of nearly $1,000 (or 24lbs) has me thinking about options of how to carry my auger out to my fishing locations with reduced risk of breakage.
A smitty sled crossed my mind today. Maybe something wider would help in open terrain, but in skinny trails I’m afraid it would not work. Your thoughts?
The excitement of drilling holes was over quicker than I had imagined. With each of the six holes we drilled taking only 20 seconds or less per hole, it was time to get fishing.
We arrived for the afternoon bite at 13:00 and were worried we had missed it. We dropped our first presentations down the holes around 13:33 and marked no fish.
The first 2 fish were caught in the proceeding 2 hours of fishing. As time ticked by, we were questioning if it was time to pack up and go home as our fish finder screen stayed a consistent blue with only our flashers showing up on the sounder and the odd fish cruising by uninterested.
As we searched the water column with a traditional flasher and jig set up tipped with a mealworm, we also tried Kokanee slammers, Big-Nasty Tackle rattle jigs (trout and pout spoons) and small jigs Brent brought me from Turkey. Unfortunately, only the traditional set up worked today.
While this was only my 3rd fishing trip this season, I was shocked at what followed after I thought the bite was done for the day. Nothing has been “normal” this year and that’s was I find intriguing about kokanee fishing. Just when you think you have it figured out, they throw something new at you.
We tried fishing the bottom as it was productive 2 weeks ago at 42ft. This time, we started marking the most fish around 15:30, but nothing was biting on the bottom. Then, we marked a few fish at 20ft and that is when we found our active fish.
Jigging at 18 to 20ft seemed to be the ticket. Fish were coming up from 30ft to chase our offering and they would only bite at the 20ft mark. Strange right? I wonder why.
Unfortunately, Austin did not get a single bite. Call it luck. Call it wrong place, wrong time. We could not get the fish to bite his presentation, because they were not biting much today. I even caught my last fish on his set up after we switched.
When we got home, I checked the stomach contents of the fish I caught. They were full of plankton and every fish also had quite a few shrimp in them. Some even had what looked like glass worms and blood worms. My assumption of the slow bite today is that the fish were full and maybe I’ll be trying a different location next time.
I’m looking forward to getting back out there soon. If you see us out there and need a hole drilled, I’d be happy to come drill a hole for you with a smile on my face. The 8 inch 40v Strike Master has me smiling every time I pick it up.