Hardwater 2022-2023!!

[Southpole]

Had to build a Smitty for easier pulling with my legs. What a night and day difference. Love it.

doing mine this week as well before we head to Cascade.

How wide did you go?

Good luck on Cascade. We usually go every year but we got some health issues to deal with  :'( . Are you going to be in the tournament? I’ll have to fish vicariously through you .

[KFhunter]

Weather said cold snap next week,  highs low 20's 

[Southpole]

Weather said cold snap next week,  highs low 20's 

Good! Have you ever tried Pierre lake? That one and Thomas is on my hit list this month.

[KFhunter]

No, I really haven’t which is strange because it’s so close lol

[Karl Blanchard]

Weather said cold snap next week,  highs low 20's 

Good! Have you ever tried Pierre lake? That one and Thomas is on my hit list this month.

fished Pierre last year. Target species was crappie but all we found were some pretty heavy trout and quite a few large mouth. The largemouth were quite the surprise!

[Southpole]

I’ve heard about guys pulling largemouth out of Pierre, that would have surprised me too. Part of why I want to go there.

[Ridgeratt]

Piereee is an interesting lake the bass were planted by a bucket biologist. At one time the WDFW was considering making it a warm water species fishery and charging a fee to fish it. The water quality is pretty clear but it used to be a premier Cutthroat Lake. But during the summer it gets fished pretty hard and the bass have had everything thrown at them in a tackle box and then some.

[bearpaw]

I’ve heard about guys pulling largemouth out of Pierre, that would have surprised me too. Part of why I want to go there.

There are a lot of bass, but not much size to them.

[Naches Sportsman]

Was in Montana for work so had to take advantage of the situation and got on the hard water last night and today and did pretty good.

[Southpole]

Good fat ones    look like little tunas.

[skidynastar33]

My kids really want to try ice fishing after watching some videos in it. Going to be in Spokane next weekend, where do you think the closest place is where ice is good? Opportunity over quality
Kyle

[Naches Sportsman]

Good fat ones    look like little tunas.

Yep. First time fishing a reservoir east of the continental divide in Montana and couldn’t be happier with the outcome.

[Southpole]

Hey KF what underwater camera do you have and does it work good?

[KFhunter]

Hey KF what underwater camera do you have and does it work good?

Marcum mission SD with panner on sale at marcum for 350 bux, it’s the whole kit battery, panner and everything.  I highly recommend a panner, almost useless without a panner.

It works great, if you want to be a YouTuber though you’ll need to step up a few notches for on board recording features.  It has an old school RCA video out jack if you have a TV in your shanty you could plug that in. It doesn’t record at all.


Couple tricks I learned is it’s nice to have a big white jig to position the camera right, it’s easier to find a big walleye or burbot jig than a tiny perch jig once you drop the camera down and attach it to your panner and start circling the camera around looking for your jig. 

I put the camera hole about 24 inches away from the fishing hole, in murky water you don’t see very far.  If it were clear water I’d got 30 or so inches.

I put the ducer hole opposite of the camera hole, it helps with the camera cord not showing up so bad on the sonar screen.   I use the ducer 1st and once I’m on fish and put up the hut then I’ll get the camera out last. 


It’s super fun and with kids its a no brained, plus I able to selectively fish, keeping the dinks off and letting the big ones take it.  I Ended up with a lot of 11 inch perch that way while my buddy got a ton of dinks lol

[Southpole]

Cool, thanks for the detailed info. I’m just now studying the different cameras and it’s between Aqua-vu and Marcum. Sounds like Marcum has better viewing in murky water and Aqua-Vu is easier to use? I have a Garmin livescope so I’ve been extremely satisfied with marking fish with that and I can tell who’s coming, who’s big and if it’s trout or perch for the most part, love it! I thought I’d turn up the volume on my fishing entertainment with a camera… it’s never enough