We headed out again today to fish the same areas again I listed in my previous report. Ice out in front of Port Clinton remains very good overall, I still recommend inexperienced Ice fishermen to avoid fishing on Lake Erie as you will have to cross a lot of pressure ridges and it can definitely be on the extreme side. Now that we have that out of the way, here is my report that you all came here for! Latest fishing report on ice Lake Erie We headed out of Port Clinton again towards our usual fishing grounds and decided to start around G can, I have been fishing here the last 4 days. finally the weather is starting to stabilize with this warm up! Today was different though as my first hole we drilled my active target lit up with a lot of marks up off the bottom. In a 100' circumference I was marking 8-15 fish at most times....this is exactly what we have been waiting for. I knew with this weather system these fish were going to start eating and it just confirmed my suspicions. We deployed our two shanties in quick order and got to work. I chose to run a blue chrome jigging rap on one rod and a chartreuse Swedish Pimple on the other rod. I really like running this combo through the ice as one is a bit more aggressive and the other is more of a finesse style bait, I can tell based on the fish's body language if he prefers one or the other. I also prefer running two rods as in my experience a lot of the time these fish run in small "hunt groups" as I like to call them. Usually 2-4 fish will roam on these flats looking for food, when one decides to eat the others will follow in short order and usually they will become competitive with each other. It didn't take but a few minutes before my active target lit up with a really nice mark, she was very aggressive darting in from almost 10' away when she saw my jigging rap, she smoked it on the first hop. That ended up being our first one of the morning and was a nice 28.5" fish. What a way to start the day! While I was getting her off the hook I could hear Kris shuffling around in the shanty next me as he was bringing one top side. I knew it was about to be a very good morning. In the next 3 hours we never ran out of markets and every 5- 10 minutes we would have a small group of fish come on one of the screens. Most were very aggressive, preferring the jigging raps, so much so we were not even having to tip them with minnows. Most of the fish ranged from 20-26" that we were catching. Kris and I had our limits in the first hour and were just fun fishing, we both have been fishing this lake long enough on the ice to know days like this are rare! One of the things that i noticed today (this is our first season running the active targets for ice fishing, we have not had good ice the last couple season so we have only been using them off of our boats to target fish)using these active targets was just how far these fish were able to see our lures and how much they were able to be "called in". I found that I prefer leaving mine in forward view as opposed to down mode that many use when ice fishing. I found by doing so it allows me to see the amount of fish around the area I am fishing as well as travel paths the fish are on. I noticed most of the fish were coming from the east heading south west today. Well over 90% of the fish I marked were on this travel line. That being said, I could see them coming well in advance, and because I was in forward view I found myself keeping them in my scope as the fish were swimming by, even if they were to my side. I then would start lifting my bait up 3-4' and letting it slam repeatedly on the bottom. I could see slight clouds of sediment being stirred up by doing this. These fish would key in on this from quite aways away and come charging in to investigate. This may help you guys in your future trips. This week we are warming up, I think the fishing will only continue to improve with these temperatures. With the amount of ice we have I am not concerned that it may soften at all as long as we do not stay this elevated for too long. Based on the winds I will start fishing again thursday. Captain Matt

Today we set out to chase Lake Erie walleye on the Western Basin and to scout ice levels for the upcoming weekend fishing plans. We set out from Port Clinton at 6:45AM and headed north to our first stop at G can where we historically do very well this time of year. We were met with a nasty pressure crack roughly a mile off shore where it was pooling water. It took us some time spudding to find a safe track past this pressure ridge, but once we were past it the ice was smooth sailing the remainder of the time. We started about a mile east of G can and were happy to see about 7-8" of nice clean clear ice! We made a few test holes and began looking around with our Active Target Systems. We noticed right away that the fish were in a negative static body language which is to be expected with the high, rising pressure we had going on. We spent about an hour of our time in this area simply looking for active groups of fish and we saw very few that were not glued to the bottom. In fact, in that hour we tried 6 different holes and did not have a single fish come on the screen that showed any interest in chasing any of our baits. We decided that this was probably going to be the case for most of the day with the pressure that was present and that we would be better off offering spot checking ice and looking for fish in general to target later this week when the weather stabilizes. We began working our way Northeast checking as we went with test holes and looking for fish, we checked from F can all the way to rattlesnake island. We found fish in most areas and they tend to favor the flats, which is no surprise as we find ourselves targeting these areas even when the water is soft. Just on the northside of F can we were able to find a nice active group of fish. We saw about 7-8 fish that were about 10' off the bottom on our test hole. We slid off to the side and punched a hole on top of them. Instantly the first fish started raising up to intersect my green Swedish Pimple about halfway down, one 6'' hop and she crushed it! She was a very nice healthy 26 incher. I grabbed my second rod rigged with a #5 jigging rap and sent it down as the rest of the pod was still hanging around. Instantly two of the marks began chasing aggressively. Three hops later we were hooked up again, this time with another 25 incher. Very nice quality fish! We hung out here for another hour waiting for another batch of active fish to come around which never presented themselves. We continued North towards the island chain. I will say it was quite rough ice up there but it was the thickest we had seen yet ranging from 14"-20". We were met with more of the same, very scattered active fish. I could just barely make out fish laying on the bottom of our active targets. These fish were very negative and would not engage in any type of presentation. But, what it did tell us was areas that were holding large numbers of fish to target in the upcoming days. See you out there! Captain Matt