We had a date with a another angler at Mantua. Met MH at the ramp a little before 0700. Had never fished with him only conversed with him via texts and phone calls. He was to be our fishing guide for the day and knows a whole lot about Mantua. We've never done well at Mantua during the hard deck and said what the heck. Any day of fishing is a whole lot better than work or just sitting home...and we love to fish plus sharing it with a very nice guy.
Anyhoo...onto fishing parked the vehicles and followed our guide out onto the ice. Very easy walking needed ice cleats. Nothing like we faced at PV on Friday as PV had 6-8" of snow plus turning to slush. Followed our guide onto the ice to the spot. Punched holes and began the day of fishing. Had a complete white-out storm hit us covering the ice in 3-4" of powder but as the day wore on the snow settled.
This was by far our BESTEST hard deck experience on Man-Too-Way. A variety of species visited our lures...Perch, Blue Gill nice sized ones, LMB and Trout. Lures we used were primarily chartreuse Atomic Ants tipped with maggots we experimented with other ice flies but went back to our usual favorite the Ant. Fished roughly 20FOW.
Have to say we are still novices to ice fishing as we learned a whole lot from our tour guide...variety of knots, rods, even properly placing maggot on hook. Can't thank MH enough for a wonderful time. We called it about 1530. For sure will be going out with him again awesome company and as students we learned a whole lot from him and again THANK HIM for sharing and making it an awesome day of fishing for us.
Pic of our take home from a super day on Mantua...