Shorter report than usual this week. We have had quite the warm up come through this past week and ice conditions are rapidly deteriorating. We have had some nice batches of thunder storms come through as well as some gale south winds. It has resulted in the ice becoming unsafe and unfit to fish unfortunately. Here at Lake Born, even days we can to be on the water does not mean they have been wasted. We have been working in the shop a lot this week in preparation for the upcoming spring. I think we will be on soft water sooner than later if you ask me with the long range forecast. I could be wrong but as they say; luck favors the prepared! On the agenda this week we spent sometime doing some upgrades to our Duckwater boat. We are transforming this duck hunting machine into a fishing machine. Due to the amount of road salt our lovely Ohio Department of Transportation decides to use to treat the roads our wiring connections have taken a beating over the last 9 duck seasons running up and down the road daily. It was time for some TLC. We have gone through top to bottom replacing all the wiring in the vessel including new interior lights, bilge pumps, switch panels, navigation lights and marine radios just to name a few. We also outfitted her with full Cisco rod holders, Cannon down riggers, Cisco trolling mast and all the fixings to go along with it. This beast will now be staying all spring and summer in the port of Lorain where she will be running daily! With an average cruising speed of 40 mph and sipping on fuel averaging 3.9 mpg she will be able to run further and fish more efficiently as she will be able to pull up to 24 rods. If you see us down there be sure to stop in and say Hi! We also pulled in our Gatortrax this week. We were able to remove the blind and put all the decoys away. The Bowfishing lights were remounted, motors all got a fresh oil change and she is ready for the first ice off to happen. We usually get into the carp hot and heavy if we can find some clean moving water during the first days the ice is breaking up. Fingers crossed you are reading about it on next weeks report! See you out there! Captain Matt

We had quite the warm up the last few days. Ice is still holding but it is definitely changing quickly. With the south winds and warm weather we have been experiencing lately Kris and I decided to give mother Erie a break and try our hand at chasing some reservoir panfish close to the house. This is something that neither of us get an opportunity to do very ofter so it’s a nice change of pace for us. We decided to head out around 2PM to the reservoir we knew would not be affected much by the winds and warm up, it turns out we were right as everywhere we checked had well over 20’’ of ice still on it. The only spots pooling water were around the edge which is to be expected. This particular reservoir is pretty small spanning less than a 1/2 mile long. We both were pretty new to the area so we decided to approach it the same way we do on the lake. We started out simply by drilling some holes and looking around in a 360 degree area looking 100’ out with the Active Targets. Our first holes were defiantly on the shallow end being 5-10’. We marked some smaller fish which I believe were bluegill but just not very many. We continued on working our way toward the center and discovered the bottom started to drop off nicely into 25-30’ of water. Once we hit that we were confident this is where the fish were going to be staging. We noticed quickly that there were multiple groups of fish in the lower 5’ of the water column in most directions we looked. I was surprised at how spooky these fish were compared to Walleye that we had been targeting up to this point. It seemed every time we would drill a set of holes the fish would move roughly 20-30’ on us. As a result we started cascading holes throughout the area so that we could simply bounce between them. I landed on a nice school of fish and decided to put on a tungsten ice fly to try first. I selected a fire tiger color and tipped it with some a wax worm. I have to admit it was rather torturous waiting for those lite jigs to sink 20-30’ down. Much much slower than our walleye lures I am used to. Never the less, once I got the jig down to the school of fish they quickly became active racing up to it. It was apparent on the active target that there was a mixture of Blue Gill and Crappie in the school. As to be expected the Blue Gill were much more aggressive and were proving too be a challenge to get them away from the lure so the Crappie would have a chance to come in on the lure. I found the best technique to be slowly lifting the jig about 3-6” above the school of fish and slightly jigging my rod tip, as soon as I saw them lifting up to the lure I would freeze and this is where the bite would happen. I was shocked at just how lite the bites were. We also noted that they were moving quite a bit being they were not tied to any type of structure. It seemed as soon as we would catch 1-2 fish out of the school they would scatter and regroup somewhere else. Kris and I spent the rest of the afternoon Jumping from hole to hole chasing these schools around as they were coming and going. Most seeming to be pretty active but we were having quite a few just simply following without biting, however when we would be able to get the Blue Gill off of us and were able to drop on a Crappie most would attempt to bite. Kris and I were able to land a few really nice Crappies this afternoon, more than enough for a nice lunch in the coming days. With half a bucket full of dandies some reaching 15” we headed in. As Kris says, any day we get to spend fishing is a good day! See you out there! Captain Matt

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