broken rod and more

As I mentioned before, Andrea and I gave each other new Abu Garcia ultra light combos for Christmas. We had very little chance to use them (Andrea less so than me) but we both caught perch on them last weekend and were very happy with how they preformed. I continued to use mine this week catching two more crappie on it but missing the hook set on several others. I blamed this on my own over reaction rather than the rod, however I did not like the size of the guides when fishing cold weather. The guides are very small and ice up very bad.

I fished again Wednesday early through the afternoon and caught one crappie, the same Thursday, I was on the ice early and caught one crappie and then my flasher died. I had been questioning how good the charger was and now I found out, I also found out it dies at about 11.6V. So my trip Thursday was over by 1030, no point in trying to catch crappie that are disinterested with no flasher to even indicate where they or your jig is in the water column. I had a spare battery maintainer / trickle charger so I hooked that up and left it sit. Surprisingly it took almost 12 hours to indicate fully charged, but at least everything seemed to be working well.

Friday seen another bitterly cold day so I decided to go out later, the wind had been blowing about 40 MPH overnight but was supposed to die down midday. I hit the ice about 1230 and fished a couple of different areas I wanted to check out...more of the same I could get on fish but not coax a bite, these new areas were also showing less fish than what I had found in other areas.

Once the wind died and the sun was beating on my black shelter it was quite pleasant, I was able to fish in my fleece until the sun went behind the trees. Once the sun was not providing the same level of heat my rod started to ice up quite badly and while trying to clean some of the ice out of the tip guide I snapped it off. I was very disappointed that it was that fragile..

Saturday seen me off to Canadian Tire where I had bought the rods, they were supposed to be warranted for one year. No problem, they told me to go get a new one, however they had no more so I ended up with a frabill ultralight combo, it was the same price but I am hesitant to think I will like it as much...

http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/frabil-ice-fishing-rod-reel-combo-0785516p.html#.UvfXivldW9Q

I already had this combo in medium for walleye and it is acceptable but not top notch, I already find the reel is not as nice as the Abu Garcia. However if it works as intended I will be ok with it. I do think I will start buying more stuff from the US and have it shipped to the parcel depot right across the border, $2.00 a parcel is all she charges and the price difference can be 1/3 of the cost of buying here...the down side is lack of warranty like Canadian Tire honours.

We have had wind chill warnings all weekend and looks like more of the same Monday so I will be buried in my shelter with the heater going trying this new rod...

Tuesday will see me doing something different, I have been asked to attend a testing phase for a job as an administrative assistant at the Morden Agriculture Research facility...God only knows how that will turn out, I expect that some of the others attending will be very experienced as well.