Svitlopillia

Hey! In my last post I told you about the winter marathon that my dad and I run every year during the ice fishing season, and I promised to tell you how our last marathon went if you were interested. Unfortunately, in the last season 2024-2025, winter wasn't very frosty and on the water bodies where we usually fish, decent ice didn't form for a very long time. When it finally became safe, at first we couldn't get out because of work, and then pike spawning restrictions kicked in. Since we focus on pike fishing during the marathon, there wasn't much point in doing it, so we didn't manage to pull off our traditional marathon in the 24-25 winter season. So this report is about the 2023-2024 season. We started our winter marathon that year on 18.01.24 and it lasted three days. During that time the weather decided to treat us to a significant warm-up after some real winter snowstorms. The roads were already clear of snow, but there was still a bit left on the water and it was slowly melting. When we got out on the ice near the shore, there was already 10cm of water on top of the ice. Daytime temperatures were mostly above zero, moderate wind, overcast, so being on the ice was pretty comfortable. So on the first day, we set the tip-ups the night before and the first hits started after sunrise. There were quite a few of them. We caught mostly small pike up to 1kg which we released right away, but we managed to land two. One pike was 1.4kg and the other was 1kg. On the second day the pike were also pretty active. Throughout the day there were plenty of misses and we also caught some small fish up to 1kg that we of course released. Overall we only managed to land one pike, same size as the first day - also 1.4kg. On the third day there wasn't as much running around checking tip-ups, so to keep from getting bored we decided to go look for roach, which we did find but not in great numbers. Overall that day we only had a few misses and one successful hit that brought us the biggest pike of the marathon - 2kg. So the results of the 2023-2024 winter marathon for both of us combined: Pike - 4 fish, 5.8kg total. Roach - 14 fish.

Ukraine, Kirovohrad Oblast, Svitlopillia

20.01.2024

Ice fishing

Roach

Pike

Free