Ice-fishing; as simple or high-tech as you want it
With the weather we’ve “enjoyed” the past few weeks it’s hard to imagine that most anglers have not at least thought about ice-fishing, even if they’ve never tried it.
One of the attractive things about the sport is that you can make it as simple or as complicated as you want.
Around here where our lakes are small and where many people fish on farm ponds, you don’t need elaborate gear. You can store almost everything you need in a five-gallon bucket. The beauty of such a minimalist approach is that you can grab your gear on short notice and fish every time your schedule coincides with safe ice.
As they do for “regular” fishing, sunfish offer a natural introduction to ice-fishing. Bluegills, pumpkin seeds, crappies and other members of the big sunfish family are generally easy to catch, abundant and delicious on a plate.
My own gear for sunfish is about as low-tech as you can get. We use inexpensive, stubby, two-foot Schooley rods, made for sunfish and perch. You can order these rods over the Internet or find them at most outdoor retail stores in fall and early winter. These rods feature a simple plastic reel mounted atop the grip, a sensitive spring-bobber tip, and an aluminum bipod that fits onto the plastic handle so the rig can be perched over the hole. The rods are ready to fish when you buy them, but we re-fit ours with a higher quality 4-pound line made especially for ice-fishing.
Be sure to watch the rods carefully when deployed. We’ve lost several of them when our attention strayed and a fish pulled the rod down through the hole. Even a 7-inch bluegill can pull a rod under the ice. If there’s snow on the ice we sometimes mound a pile over the rod handle to serve as an anchor.
Any ice-rod with good line and a conventional spinning reel works just as well. The important common element is a sensitive spring-bobber tip, which reveals even the faint bites of winter so that you can set the hook at the right time.
Besides an auger, rods and bait, all you need tackle-wise is an ice skimmer to keep the holes clear.
Terminal tackle for sunfish continues the theme of simplicity. No bait beats a 1/32-oz. tear-drop jig, tipped with a waxworm or a cluster of maggots. Jig colors sometimes make a difference. Red and orange, at times, attract more bites than blue or green, and vice versa.
You will catch more bluegills and sunfish if your bait hangs motionless below the hole. Winter bluegills are on the lookout for an easy meal that offers no resistance. Consistent jigging seems to intimidate them. But, interestingly, you can entice action during a slow period by briefly jiggling the rod tip, or even just fingering the line a couple of times, like pulling a trigger. Bluegills are attracted to the movement but they seldom actually bite until the bait falls motionless again.
A good technique is to start by dropping baits to the bottom, then reeling in a few turns of line so that the jig-and-bait are suspended just inches above the bottom silt. If you don’t get a bite, reel up a few turns until you find the depth where fish are suspending.
Some western Pennsylvanians take a more advanced approach to ice-fishing. Bob Griffith of Vandergrift and Mike Kuna of Pittsburgh ice-fish competitively as a two-man team in the North American Ice Fishing Circuit, and at tournaments across the country’s “ice belt.”
Their top advice to anglers who want to catch more and bigger fish is: move around.
“It’s a limited season here, maybe eight weeks of good winter,” said Kuna of Pittsburgh. “And most people work, so there’s only weekends–16 days–to fish. You want to avoid dead water. Think about it. When you fish from a boat you fan-cast in all directions, and cover all the water in between with your retrieve. Through the ice you’ve got a 7-inch hole and the water column below it. To catch fish, you’ve got to be mobile.”
Both anglers say electronics help them to find productive spots and refine their presentation.
“The ice angler around here who is ready to advance needs to get some electronics,” Griffith said, “A good flasher unit will make you a better fisherman. It’s a real-time tool that shows you structure, your own bait or lure, and fish. That is the first and most important step you can take to improve.”
Kuna agrees but says there are steps anglers can take to fish better before investing in electronic devices.
“Definitely upgrade your equipment,” Kuna said. “It is essential to have good rods and reels. With cheap tackle you are sacrificing a good drag system. You need to fish light lines through ice and a good drag system will allow you to play decent-size fish. Invest in good reels and strong ice rods with sensitive tip.”
While both men demand good equipment, they agree that ice-fishing does not have to be prohibitively expensive.
“You could get an introductory Vexilar flasher for as little as a hundred-and-fifty dollars,” Griffith said. “If you invested fifteen-hundred you could have a good gas auger, shelter, all your rods and reels and fish the rest of your life and change very little.”
Western Pennsylvania, Griffith and Kuna agree, is a great region for ice-anglers.
“The opportunities here are great,” Griffith said. “You could go a whole ice season in western Pennsylvania and never fish the same lake twice.
Remember that Pennsylvania’s fishing license year ends on Dec. 31, so a new 2014 license is required to ice-fish now.