After a long and mostly disappointing ice fishing season it was finally time to get back out on the boat...this time with a new bow mount trolling motor complete with iPilot which is pretty much the greatest fishing invention of all time.
This morning I celebrated Tim's birthday with him by landing a couple beautiful brown trout.
We started the day by the main lighthouse gap looking for lake trout, but couldn't coax any into biting, so we went and casted for browns.
After about 2.5 hours of fishing, we had yet to land a fish. Luckily we struck up conversation with a couple great guys in another boat when we saw them catch a couple fish in our old spot and they told us they were dead sticking 3" Gulp just off the bottom. 
While it seemed impossible that any fish could want to eat a small piece of plastic just sitting near the bottom, they did. Tim caught three browns and a smallmouth bass this way.I had some fish on with Gulp, one of them breaking the leader knot off...but I caught my two trout in very different ways.
My first trout bit a small fathead (we had two small fatheads that accidentally found their way into our minnow bucket) and put up a heck of a fight. After losing another fish on my other fathead, I tried using the shiners that we bought, but to no avail. I ended up catching my second trout by filleting a shiner and suspending the minnow filet a foot from the bottom.
In the end it was a fantastic day and I can't wait to get back out there next weekend.
