Like most winters, I wasn't able to fish on the ice nearly as often as desired. And, like most winters, my first icy excursions happened around the Christmas holidays. Holy smokes, were they icy - the warmest day I fished was -8! Which is why I love my little portable fish house so much:
Crawled inside that little beauty on Secret Lake #4, turned on the heater, and the bitter cold just disappeared. More importantly, so did the rest of the world. One of the things I love most about ice fishing is the isolation and solitude of being inside that house. Sure, you can still hear the annoying augers and snowmobiles that the humans insist on using to ruin the peacefulness. But somehow being inside that house makes those sounds less annoying. Fishing from a boat can be peaceful (though much less effective in late December) but in a boat you're always exposed, out there for the world to see. In that house the rest of the world doesn't exist. It's fabulous.
My second favorite item of importance is my fish finding, depth finding sonar unit:
I spent years being stubborn, refusing to bend to the lure of technology and insisting that I could catch just as many fish without a Vexilar as with it. Know what? I think I was right. Take a look at the next picture, the one with the pretty lights. See that band of light to the right of the number 10? That's a fish. Why did I take a picture of a picture of a fish instead of the fish? Because that fish wouldn't bite. I used to sit over a hole in the ice with my line in the water and wonder if there were fish down below not biting. Now I don't have to wonder anymore, because yes, yes there are fish down there and no, they usually don't bite! So all the fish I didn't catch without a sonar unit are still the fish I don't catch while staring at green, orange, and red lights. But, as they say, it's called a fish finder, not a fish catcher.
Even when the fish won't bite (which is often) having the Vexilar allows me to see whether or not there is the potential for a bite. Sometimes that potential is as exciting as the bite...although I've yet to find a recipe for a really delicious serving of fried potential.
So, set up the house, turn on the Vexilar, see the fish......start fishing. On this day of fishing I was jigging for perch and walleyes, and my favorite lure for those species is a Swedish Pimple tipped with a minnow. The Pimple in this picture is a small, fluorescent variety that I used early in the day for perch. I love a lure with any flash of red - the red sticker and red flipper combo with the fluorescent body looked deadly to me......so I took a swipe at it. You didn't think the back half of the minnow just fell off by itself, did you? When the fish aren't biting yet and the tummy starts rumbling, well....minnow tails are tastier than you might think they'd be.
Since using two lines is legal when fishing through the ice I will always have a second line down while I jig my primary line. I've been known to have a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth line down, too, since anything is legal as long as you don't get caught. I don't fish on "secret" lakes for no reason, you know. Wait, this took a wrong turn in that last sentence. Where was I...oh yes, the legal second line. It's pretty tough to effectively jig two lines at once so I almost always use a deadstick in my second hole. A deadstick is simply live bait suspended under a bobber, like this picture shows:
Fishing pros coined the term "deadstick" because you don't really do anything with this rig other than let it sit. The minnow swims, the fish come and eat it. Sounds boring.....because it is. I use the term "deadstick" because once I put the bait in the water and set the rod down I rarely ever touch it again. Ever. Because the bobber never moves. Because the fish missed the memo about the available food hanging under my house, apparently. In theory, using a deadstick while jigging madly near said stick is an extremely effective way to catch fish - the jigging draws them in, the minnow that can't swim away catches them. Dumbest theory ever.
Actually that's not true - I've had some really good luck on a deadstick. But not this year. The walleyes I caught during the bitter cold Christmas week were all hooked on my jigged Swedish Pimple. Not the Pimple I showed you above - my walleye Pimple, which shall remain secret. For whatever reason the walleyes were not interested in live, swimming bait. Last year it was the opposite; very few fish would hit my jig, but the bobber was going down pretty often. And that is the joy of fishing - figuring out what works and what doesn't so at some point this happens:
That, my friends, is what they don't call a whopper. It's a pretty small walleye...but it was the first walleye of the ice season and big enough to peel a couple of fillets from, so into the bucket it went. There were two more walleyes caught that night, both bigger (and both legal, I might add) along with a few decent sized perch. A perfect amount of fish for a tasty meal. A perfect way to start the ice fishing season.
It's now nearing mid-April. I have plans to get back on the ice - on Secret Lake #3 - on April 28. Most years such plans would be foolish, impossible even. Not this winter. As of April 1 (no foolin') there were two feet of ice on SL #3, and with below-zero temps since then I'm guessing new ice has been added. As much as I love fishing early ice for walleyes and perch, I will defy death to fish for big bluegills on late ice. While the rest of Minnesota moans about the delayed spring thaw I am secretly thankful for every one of these cold days. I hope to share more tales of this same activity, done in an entirely different way, in a few weeks. Until then, keep jiggin'!
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