Early Ice And The Pike Were Hungry! 

A few nights around 10 degrees will make ice pretty quick!

@@ndyakanglerthat’s crazy here in southwest wisconsin the lakes are still clear

Take a trip to northern MN on Red Lake, you can rent an ice castle and have a chance at catching trophy fish. Very accessible and ice castles are literal RVs with holes to fish through the floor so you’re also staying warm and in style!

That's what she said

Depends on the regulations. They may have a hole size limit.

​@@parishwilkins1870darnit, beat me to it haha!

@@parishwilkins1870 somebody had to say it!

I’ve made that mistake a long time ago when I try pulling a Muskie through one , it came up side way and I couldn’t fit the beast through the 8” hole , had to drill another one next to it to widen the area

YES !!!

it is pretty crazy how frozen it is, almost 7 inches of solid ice on the red river in Manitoba.

You aren’t lying! He’s a super cool guy, on and off camera. Much respect.

There’s lots of bass and pike there!

I have one of their more expensive ice suits too but that one is so warm I just don’t wear it much. If it’s cold enough I’d need it outside I’m probably going to be sitting in the shack and it gets way too hot pulling it out. I just got the Trekker about a month ago, both that and my new hub from Frank’s as well! The ice suit was about half as much there as anywhere else I’ve seen it.

@@ndyakangler awesome. You’ll love the Trekker for nice weather days on the ice. I broke mine in well last season and love it. Honestly the best sale purchase I’ve made in a while. Good luck, Matt. I hope you have a great Ice season. Here in Northern Illinois, we’re still flirting with fall. Ughhh… I wish we had 8-12”s of solid black ice already. The past couple years, ice has really been lack luster. Hoping for a nice freeze and no snow🤞👍🎣 …Good luck, buddy. Member… Saturday morning vids for Boots! 😂

Good luck! Tight lines

I hear ya

Same here in Wisconsin. Early ice scares the crap outta me!

I fished some places in east Tn. Absolutely stunning out there.

I use a Strikemaster Lazer auger that I replaced the hand crank part with a Milwaukee mud mixer drill.

I catch all kinds of stuff. Bass, pike, crappie, walleye, even some channel catfish! Winter is about half the year here so everything has to eat eventually.

He wasn’t out fishing all day yesterday!

Which area of CT? I'm in New Haven County, and there is some thin ice on smaller ponds, but mostly open water. I got some trout and pickerel today.

@@snakeeyes9246 I’m northern Fairfield county. We have a small pond on property at work and nothing but little pieces. Haven’t been to candlewood in a bit and the river/lake Lilly has smaller pieces here and there. Good luck this winter!

I’d like to head south and escape the cold for a while but yeah it’s tough trying to take off for a week or two at a time with a two year old at home. That’s one of the tough parts of being this far north and trying to do RU-vid fishing videos for a living though, it’s about a six month window where the ad rates go up for summer outdoors type videos and getting new footage the first couple months of that stretch can be tough if not impossible here when we’re waiting for ice to come off the lakes and the rivers are going through their spring flood season. I always try to hold on to a half dozen or so videos from the past summer to try to jump start my channel back to life before I can get out much again. It would be nice to get out and explore and fish some new places though, try for some monster bass down south somewhere or maybe fish some redfish or something instead of staring down a hole in the ice!

Matt I live east of Cleveland, Ohio so I fully understand the frustration of winter. I live for Lake Erie to warm up in the Spring. I use your videos all winter to keep me stoked for another summer of chasing smallies. I am glad you saved some for winter because I watched all your 2023 videos. LOL. @@ndyakangler

It isn’t really that great stay where it’s warm.

There are plenty of crappie in there too! My friend has caught a bunch on open water in that bay and we’ve found a couple through the ice once it starts getting dark out.

I’ll probably catch some walleye, crappie, and maybe some catfish too. I’m not too picky through the ice I’m just happy to catch something!

I’ve never had much luck targeting smallies through the ice but I’ve caught a few fishing minnows out deeper for whatever is roaming the reservoir channel.

It’s awesome! The only thing I highly recommend is going with one of their “high output” batteries. I’d have the drill start to cut off after a few holes with the regular basic Milwaukee battery but the H.O. one has worked flawlessly, plus according to the specs those batteries handle the cold better too.

I’ll eat pike every now and then. One of these days I’ll have to keep some to let my 2 year old daughter try some fresh fish.

@@ndyakangler fresh is best 👍

Central Minnesota.

Wow. That's nuts. My stepson lives up by Cass Lake and was saying they aren't on the ice yet.

We have a couple 40-45 degree days in the forecast for next week but it still gets down below freezing over night. I don’t think it will have a whole lot of impact on the ice once there’s several inches.

I tied on about 15” of 20lb Daiwa J-Fluoro.

This is from Wednesday. We were below freezing for about a week and well below at night. It only takes a few cold nights to go from open water to 4” of ice at some spots.

@@ndyakangler absolutely impressive! I was figuring your channel would pause until things ice over. Happy you have the opportunity to quickly switch to ice fishing. One of my favourite youtube channels!

Good old Minnesota, land of 10,000 laws.

Yes Sir. That is a fact.@@ndyakangler

We were using treble hooks through the back of the minnow. Not one fish swallowed a hook all day. I think most of it is just keeping an eye on the tipups and not giving the fish several minutes to swallow the bait.

When ice fishing I have my audio recorder buried under a few layers of clothes so I film until the GoPro dies then reset them both. Open water I go for 10-15 minute clips and reset.

Thank you

Minnesota. We’ve had some good ice making weather the past ten days or so.

@@ndyakangler Right, makes sense, even though I'm in Canada and you are in the USA, Some parts of the US are still north of me, Excluding Alaska of course hahaha are you on the Ontario border or Manitoba?