Johnson Thinfisher review

After last week's successful pike fishing trip to Porcupine Lake I've decided to do a review on my star player from that trip :the Johnson Thinfisher. All the pike I caught and landed last weekend were caught on the Thinfisher (except one dastardly beast which tore the Williams ice silver spoon clean off my rod).the Johnson Thinfisher comes in a neat package, I purchased my one and it's replacement at Canadian Tire for $ 6.99. I purchased the 1/4 oz version as I also had rainbow,spake and lake trout in mind. The package comes with a fairly detailed instruction guide for the three line attachment types. The setups are as follows :  Front or fast is the front grommet set for fast vibration and short weavin5, middle or medium : the default setup and it's the second grommet and is medium vibration and medium length weaving  ( this is the setting I used for this trip) and the last is rear or slow, is for slow vibration and long weaves. The Thinfisher is also equipped with a chamber around the center of balance that has a rattle which produces sonic activity as it rattles and weaves. When I set the lure up and started to use it I was using highly aggressive jigging motions and had multiple hits that didn't hold and one that did but was barley hooked. I switched to an agresssive and stop action and the hits became takers landing three more and the one large pike came along and tore the Thinfisher off at the hole entrance ending my happy streak ( yes I was re-tying after each pike). This lure has "Ice" markings however in a vertical fishing situation it would do outstanding in the canoe or above a brookie hole you can feel even on the medium setting the highly functional vibration setting. The Thinfisher was a kind of spur of the moment purchase but it performed well out of my expectations. The replacement I purchased this weekend will hopefully be put to good use again this coming weekend, I want to get some trout and get some camping done. This lure gets my 5 stars.

Friday afternoon ice fishing on Porcupine lake

On Friday I took a vacation day, while having lunch I got a text from my friend Andrew wanting to know if we wanted to go fishing. We settled on some pike fishing on Porcupine lake. We drove over and picked Andrew up and went down to Deadman's point. The spot we wanted to try was a rock point Jenn and I catch decent sized perch off of. We hiked about a kilometer over some skidoo trails and shin deep snow and we reached the point and set up about 30 meters off the point. The water was around 6 ft deep and an hour later we moved a further out and into 8-10 ft of water. After a wait of about half an hour Jenn got a big hit on her minnow and  then it let go a few seconds later it hit again and then again, Jenn set the hook and pulled a nice pike through the hole . Andrew was next to pull in a pike on his minnow. Using a rapala jigging shad I pulled a pike in as well. Throughout the afternoon we lost a bunch of hits and in the end Jenn pulled in 4 pike on minnows and lost several  and nearly lost her rod down a hole, I pulled in 4 pike with the rapala and lost it to another pike and when I switched to a Williams silver spoon I was pulled off balance by a sudden and violent hit and a split second later a loud snap sounded as the pike snapped my line taking my second lure of the day. Andrew also had great success pulling in 4 pike a perch and a nice sized walleye. It was excellent day spent fishing and finally some successes after a long winter fruitlessly fishing.