More Ice

When I got home from Florida, my dock and boat lift looked like this.  A little twisted, but repairable.

Then the ice started moving, and pushed the boat lift towards shore.  Still maybe able to salvage some of it.

Now that the wind has pushed the ice further up on my shore, there's not much to save.

I must live right in the "funnel-gunnel".  None of my neighbors have any ice on their shore.  I keep my sunfish and small fishing boat on jet ski lifts.   I pulled them out of the water, and up on the shore so nothing would happen to them over the winter.  The ice came up the shore, and broke the legs off both of them.

Ice Yak

Saw these two hard core kayakers out on the lake yesterday. As you can see, the ice isn't off the lake yet. Turns out that the fellow in the yellow Hobie Out back is my fellow Hobie fishing team member Nathan. They had to break the ice to get around my boat dock.

Back home again

Back in Indiana after a couple of months in the sunshine.  Really missed this Indiana weather.  It was 60 degrees here yesterday.  Today we had thunderstorms with lots of rain, strong winds, then about 2" of sNOw, and tonight the temperature drops to single digits.  And the lakes are still frozen solid.

But I really enjoyed Florida.

I caught several nice redfish. Here's the two largest.

 

Even my pal Dawg caught a redfish

I had a pirate in my little boat, but he didn't have much luck with the redfish.

Here's a short video showing a redfish being revived and released.

The ice is off the White River, and my new Hobie kayak is on the way, so I hope to be posting more smallmouth bass photos soon.

Pirate Fishing

I HOOKed up with my old pal the pirate Don Argay yesterday. Shelly was kind enough to take Don out and let him catch some fish.
Last night we all went to the back room at Berts to see Deb and the Dynamics. All day, Don had built up this band " totally awesome" says he. So often, they never match the build up. Not so with this band. They exceeded" totally awesome" by a long shot. Best band and best show in forever.

Fly Away

We had a great week fishing at Pine Island. Caught some large redfish, a few snook, hunderts of trout (including some gators) and a variety of other fish.
Shelly is a wonderful host and has a deluxe home and flats boat. We had severely good weather all week. Sunny with highs in the mis 80's. Hate to go back NOrth.
Also, I enjoyed seeing all the wildlife in SW Florida. Today, we watched 2 adult eagles and a youngster around their nest.

More reds

Today, we caught about a hundert trout and a few more redfish. Shelly caught the days biggest red. It was so big that I couldn't get both his head and the entire fish in the photo.
You can tell which I consider more important.

Gator Trout

No, that's not when a fish and alligator get together.
A "gator" trout is a speckled sea trout over 20" long. Mine today was 23". Shelly's largest from yesterday was 27".