Ice Fishing on Lake Towhee Part 1.5

Well, for starters, deciding to write a Part 1 and Part 2 ice fishing story was probably a bad idea. By titling and publishing the first effort on the topic of ice fishing in '11 as "Part 1", I kind of set things up for some sort of resolution in "Part 2", i.e. catching a fish in Lake Towhee. On the first day, I came up with zip, but our friend Matt caught a nice pickerel. Although, he did so right after we left, so we didn't even really get the satisfaction of seeing him catch it in person. Reviews of Towhee, and what we knew about the body of water seemed promising, but we came up mostly handed, aside from Matt R.

About 5 of us came out to Towhee for about 5 hours the following day. We must've had 15 lines in the water between all of us. Some in deep areas, some along the weed-lines, some near a tree trunk. We used big shiners, small flathead minnows, jigged this and that sort of lure, and came up zero all around.

Determined to catch a fish so I could wrap up Part 2 of this article, a week later, Bob and I decided we needed explore something unconventional and local. We hit the Manayunk Canal right in the middle of Philadelphia. On one side of my car, parked on Main St., was Starbucks. On the other side, about 4' of water with ice on top. Bob's brother has had a lot of good luck with bass in the summer so we thought we'd give it a shot. After all, the little stretch we were on was only about .25 miles from the Schuylkill. Ice measured 4". We drilled (4) holes and used minnows from last week at Towhee. We hung out for a few hours, dutifully checked the bait now and then, and caught nothing. It was 14(F) at 9am. It never really seemed to improve. The sky was milky white and the sun was just so unwilling to even pretend to have an effect. Everything screamed "frigid" including the fish activity level. Frustrated, we packed up when most of the minnows seemed to fade into oblivion from the quickly freezing ice in the bait bucket.

The way I look at it, with each failed outing, we only increase the chance of a major edible catch on Lake Winnisquam in NH in mid February.

One way or the other, fish or no fish, Part 2 of this won't be written until the weekend on Lake Winnisquam in NH closes out the 2011 ice fishing season. That's just how it is going to have to be.