Ice Fishing Tips

February 20, 2015 / galen / Fishing, Ice Fishing

If you enjoy ice fishing, then you are among the dedicated few who will take on all challenges to spend time outdoors and catch fish in any weather conditions. The key to ice fishing success is not necessarily how to catch more fish or bigger fish but how to make ice fishing a more enjoyable experience. Follow some, or all, of these tips to be more comfortable and to get the most out of your day on the lake.

Bring along a thick board to place both of your feet on. It will insulate your feet from the ice, and you’ll stay warmer longer. Make sure it’s wide enough.

The ideal depth for ice fishing is 6-12 inches off the bottom. that’s where fish tend to be in the winter months.

Try an underwater camera next time you go ice fishing. Drill three holes in the ice, each about 2 feet apart, in a line. Drop the camera down one of the outside holes and aim it towards the lures/bait you drop down the other two holes. see the article

Use the drive-by fish finder method. Drive by the lake you plan to fish the day prior, a few hours after sunrise. Everybody should be set up, and you should get a good idea of where the fish are.

Smooth the edges of the hole above and below the ice. This will prevent your line from being nicked and cut by the sharp edges of the hole.

Don’t waste your money on an expensive heated pad or seat. It’s too much stuff to carry. Instead, use a five gallon bucket to carry your gear out to the fishing spot and turn it over to use as a seat while you are fishing. Put a thick piece of wood under the bucket as insulation.

A Hole With a View

February 12, 2015 / galen / Ice Fishing

Most of my winter Saturdays and Sundays have been spent chasing a puck around the ice, not dropping a hook through it. But now I’ve seen ice fishing from a whole new perspective. On a recent Sunday, my fishing partner brought along his underwater video camera. 15 seconds after dropping it down the hole, technology changed my impression of ice fishing! Suddenly the frozen quiet sheet of 2-1/2 foot thick ice was viewed for what it really is, a parking lot on top of the same lake full of hungry fish it was all spring, summer and fall.

The underwater camera made it a whole new game, and helped me adjust technique. We drilled several holes, with the hooks and bait down two of them and the camera down another. After we did the proper aiming, we were lined up to watch the action. Soon there were 5 perch gathered around the hook, staring at it as if it was a hypnotists watch. If I raised it a few inches, they hovered and watched it go up, in unison, Then, from the shadows far off came a hungry perch and took the bait in front of all the watchers. As I started to reel it in, it appeared to fly straight up and out of the picture screen, and up the hole. I don’t know who was more excited about viewing the gathering fish, me or the three kids along for the day.

I was surprised at the clarity of the image, even in fairly cloudy water on a cloudy day. The camera itself takes only a few minutes to set up, after the holes are drilled. Take the weighted eye piece out of the bag, attach the long cable to the back of the small battery powered monitor, and drop it down the hole. An X-brace with a locking clip set across the hole and you simply rotate the cable to change the view of the camera.

What was really exciting to see was what happened when a pike or a walleye came onto the scene. The perch dashed off, quickly, not interested in being the next meal. With a quick change of bait, substituting a minnow for the maggots, the hungry pike was hooked, for a while. The small treble hook I was using for perch was too small for the big pike. It’s hard to read size using the underwater camera, but while the pike was taking the bait, it was also bumping the camera, 2-1/2 feet away. That big pike would have been fun to pull up the hole after 15-20 perch, the biggest about 11 inches.

The video display also made it easy to judge the effectiveness of my technique. Leaving the hook and maggot bait sitting about 6 to12 inches above the lake bottom was moderately successful. Fast movements tended to make them back off quickly and take a long time to return. Slow twitches, a couple of inches at most, had the best results. It was rarely the fish next to the hook that took the bait. It was almost always from the back of the pack to attack the hook.

If you want to get more fun out of ice fishing, and you want to catch more fish, make the investment (approximately $400 to $800) in an underwater camera. The kids, if you take them, will stay interested for longer and you will know, instead of guessing, what’s going on below the thick layer of ice.

Fly Fishing for Perch

November 10, 2012 / galen / Fishing, Fly Fishing

I went belly boating into a shallow bay in early Aug with the thought of tossing streamers in to the reeds for pike. Immediately I started getting hits, little hits, tap tap hits that perch make. Perch on the fly? Why not? I switch to a Mickey Fin fly to see what would happen. More hits, then more, then more of the tap tap perch bites. With a few hook sets, I pulled in a couple Perch, a beautiful little fish, very colorful. They had been hooked on the outside of the mouth. Hmmmmm….., hook to big? I think so. What do Perch love, and walleye for that matter? They love the leaches. I switched to a leach imitation fly and the quest for Perch was on!

Obviously I had the wrong gear, but I needed to improvise. To throw the streamers to the big toothy pike I had imagined, I had brought out my 8 weight fly rod equipped with a steel leader and snap hook. Too much for the 1/2 pound Perch? Well, ya, it was, but when I switched the steel leader to 4 feet of 1X tippet followed by some 4X tippet, I had a better feel for the tapping action and made more consistent hook up with the perch. In the next 2 hours, I caught 25+ fish in 2 hours. 4 or 5 of these Perch of 7 plus inches and a few 9 inchers that would have been keepers for anyone fishing on the docks nearby. For each perch I released there were 3 that I hooked but lost. While I had improvised with tippet as a leader, I was still too heavy on the gear. An 8 weight is appropriate for a nice sized pike, or the Idaho steelhead I was catching last April. Tomorrow I would go lighter. A 4 weight rod would be ideal, but a 6 weight is the lightest fly rod I own.

The next two mornings I was up early, but in no rush. A cup of coffee then me and the dog headed down to the same bay, minus the boat, flippers and waders. It is August, the water temperature in the bay was a comfortable 71 degrees. Waders were just making me sweat the day before and the bay was shallow enough to stand in nearly everywhere I had paddled my way to the day before. My 6 weight fly rod was set up with a 7-1/2 foot floating leader followed by a few feet of 4X tippet and size 14 hook with a leach pattern tied the night before. A smaller hook did exactly what it should, it caught more fish, including the tiny ones. It also increased the bite to land ratio where I was now releasing at least half of the Perch that bit the hook. How many on that day? Maybe 50 fish for the first two hours of the morning. My dog came swimming to me each time I hooked a fish, ready to chase it away upon release. She’s really good at that. Eventually she tired and laid on shore watching, wishing I would flip a fish her way.

I changed my plan again for the last day, deciding to target only the larger Perch with an egg sucking leach, a #10 hook size. The result was many hits but only fish big enough to get the hook in their mouth were hooked and landed. After catching over 100 fish the previous 3 days, I had a pretty good feel now for the TAP TAP of a seven inch plus Perch compared to the tap tap of a smaller fish and generally when I set the hook it was worth it.

I realized on the drive home, that originally I had set out to hook up with some pike on a fly rod from by belly boat but ended up just wading and yanking out Perch after Perch. The Pike can wait, the Perch were a blast. I’ll be back for the big ones later in the year.

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