The water temps of our pond just hit 50 F, (10 C), which is when I cut off feeding them for the coming winter months. It may take a little longer here to walk on water as it's a El Nino year, but make no mistake, winter always makes his appearance in Michigan. I'll be walking on water soon enough.
Like you
@Amarok, I started fishing when I was old enough to walk and it has always been a great love of mine. The diet of winter fish changes as the bluegills will be eating copepods and diatoms which are so small, they can barely be seen. That diet makes the fish caught during the winter months taste so much sweeter then they are the rest of the year.
Ice usually comes at the tail end of December on average, but can also show up in early December, or as late as mid January. He will arrive, it's just a matter of when. I plant fat head minnows in the pond for the winter months as the perch like minnows over diatoms and copepods. I planted two gallons of them the first week of October this year.
The solitude of ice fishing in a small shanty brings me peace and harmony. It also allows me to reflect on what can be important to me at the time. It also lets me reflect on a lesson I learned at an early age. Patience, which is something the whole world could use more of.
I fished our pond for the first time since early summer about a week ago and caught two hybrid bluegills, both of which were about ten inches or so.
I never use bait on the pond fish as that would be too easy. Instead, I use a Lil Nipper jig about 1/32 of an ounce with the barb flattened out and impart a wiggling jigging action on the retrieve. The fish are still easy to catch. I do it to assess the size and health of the fish and all are carefully released.
Lately, I've been spending some time skimming leaves and filamentous algae from the pond. The pond is surrounded by trees, so there are a lot of leaves.
If I can get to them within a few days of them falling into the pond, I can skim them off the surface. However a good rain will sink them and then it's quite a bit more work getting them off the bottom with the skimming net.
Lately when I go deeper with the skimming net to get some of the algae, I've been getting a lot of young of the year fish. Red eared sunfish, hybrid bluegills, large mouth bass, perch, and minnows. As I toss the algae and leaves into a Shapell ice fishing sled that is about a foot tall, I can paw through the algae and leaves and pick out the small young of the year fish and return them to the pond. The algae and leaves get tossed on a large compost pile which gets used in our garden. The veggies and fruit trees love it.
These bluegills and crappie were caught on a lake about 5 miles away. They are an easy bite in the fall.
Catch and release in our pond. I usually fish it two or three times during the winter. I've caught some very nice perch through the ice. The largest was a female filled with eggs that measured 16 1/2 inches. This one in the pic is about 13 inches.
A Jumbo stretching the one pound test line.
Tight lines M8s. Stay safe.
I always have a pair of these in my winter coat. I made the ones on the left along with some others like it I gave to some friends years ago.
It's better to have them and not need them, versus needing them and not having them. They can be used to pull oneself out if one falls through.
I used to be one of the first to venture out on first ice which was barely two inches. Nowadays, I wait for others to go first, and then I go. I'm never the first guy out there nowadays.
Steelhead fishing the shore of Lake Michigan
It's a discussion board, we're discussing. 
