Ronnie's first iced fish

I went ice fishing today with my young

Ronnie's second iced fish, but first
that didn't flop back in the hole

friend Ronnie. I've gone fishing with him a few times. He caught a 24 pound carp on his first attempt to catch one.

Ronnie had never caught a fish ice fishing. Today's high temp was near forty degrees so I cut out of work an hour early, picked Ronnie up and headed out for some icing.We bought a dozen shiners and set them up on some traps. He drilled a bunch of other holes for jigging.

Within 10 minutes we had three flags and no fish to show for it. On the jigging rods, we couldn't buy a fish. I feared Ronnie would leave without catching his first fish. Then another flag went up. Ronnie pulled in a decent yellow perch.  As he pulled it out of the water it spit the hook. It flopped on the ice for a second then fell back into the hole. It certainly counted as his first ice fish but we did not get a picture.

Luckily a few minutes later the jigging rods started bending. We got a couple sunfish and some perch. I didn't keep count but we ended up with ten to fifteen fish. We got all of them jigging except that first perch. I got the big fish of the day. It was a pickerel of about 14 inches. It swallowed my Kastmaster and somehow it did not cut me off. All in all fishing was only okay. I was just happy Ronnie caught some fish.