January 2010 — John Gillespie's Waters & Woods

January 2010

Episode 1
2009 Mills Fleet Farm Highlights Show
Show Date; January 2nd & 3rd, 2010

It’s our annual Mills Fleet Farm highlight reel show. We sit down Kurt Van Hout of Mills Fleet Farm to pick out the top winners of our yearly contest. We also take a look at the most memorable catches from 2009. It was a great year for fishing, and we are looking forward to 2010.

Episode 2
Bayfield County Ice
Show Date: January 9th & 12th, 2010
Location: Bayfield County, Wisconsin
Guide: Ice Guide: Jim Hudson [715-779-5833 | fishchequamegonbay.com]

This week we are up in Bayfield County with our resident Chequamegon Bay expert Jim Hudson. Jim has us on a different bite each of the two days that we are in town. We have a great time catching almost a dozen different species of fish during our stay. We also have help from all the usualy suspects, including musky guru Pete Maina, ice angling expert Tex Maina, our rock star buddy Brian Schram, and bunch of other people that love the outdoors.

Day one has us on a small inland lake

Day two we head out on to Chequamegon Bay, and pop around to find

Episode 3
Whitefishin’
Show Date: January 15th, & 16th, 2010
Location: Door County, Wisconsin
Guide: Pro Guide Dale Stroschein [920-743-5731 | wackywalleye.com]

It’s a whitefish weekend this week as we head out to find this fun to catch fish. We are fishing out of Dale’s Sand Bay Resort with his buddy Lon Goman. Dale has a whole slew of permanent shacks, which makes fishing in the heart of winter a very comfortable and enjoyable experience.

Jumping around to different depths can mean the difference between catching your limit of 10 in an hour to not so much as seeing a mark on your Vexilar. We are varying our depths from 20 to 35 feet. When we start to catch one after another, we end up in the deepest of that range at 35 feet. Catching whitefish out of deep water make for a long and exciting fight. As an added bonus, our hot spot is in one of those aforementioned shacks.

Episode 4
Lake Erie Ice
Show Date: January 23rd & 24th, 2010
Location: Lake Erie, Port Clinton, Ohio
Guide: Charter Captain Mike Patterson [419-308-6925]

We’re on solid Lake Erie ice this week, catching monster walleyes one after another, but a lot of preparation went into getting us to our hot spot on the lake. We are guided by Charter Captain Mike Patterson, who is coast guard certified to guide on Lake Erie. Mike takes the utmost caution before guiding anybody onto what can be very unstable ice conditions.

We are 6 miles from shore, and take a winding ice road to our spot. In the days preceding our visit Mike checked the ice with a spud bar, making sure we had safe ice to drive our Yamaha ATV’s out to the spot, hence the winding road out. Mike tells us that there is no such thing as safe ice on Lake Erie, that the ice conditions change on a daily basis with the ever changing wind and current.

Once we are at our spot, and the fishing heats up, we are pulling walleyes through the ice one after another. We are fishing in around 30 feet of water using Northland Tackles “Puppet Minnow” and “Macho Minnow.” We are also putting an emerald shiner minnow on just about ever hook on our bait to attract these monster walleyes.

Episode 5
Dale’s Party
Show Date: January 30th, 2010
Location: Sturgeon Bay; Door County, Wisconsin
Guide: Pro Ice Guide Dale Stroschein [920-743-5731 | wackywalleye.com]

It’s a party this week at Dale Stroschein’s Sand Bay Resort! We are out on the ice with a group of great people geared up to have a great time fishing. We start at sunset setting up jigging for walleyes, hoping for the monsters that we’ve caught before. These massive fish are a blast to catch, and our whole crew is on the hunt for the elusive 10 pounder. The walleyes only bite during the morning and night, so we spend mid-day on our whitefish hotspot. We catch a load of whitefish, and have a great time doing it.