Editors Note; In this three part series our group of professional anglers and writers share their keys to early season success on the ice. This is the second best time of the year to catch a trophy fish in the hardwater season, so lets get you ready!
EARLY ICE SUCCESS
During late fall many anglers have shifted their focus to hunting season, the fishing pressure dropping drastically in the last three months prior to first ice.
This gives our smaller lakes a much-needed break creating some great early ice action. The strikes can be explosive and the days can be full of steady action. Its hard to beat late ice fishing in March but this is your best option next to it. Early ice makes up for the mid winter blues when fish can be extremely negative.
BE CAREFUL OUT THERE
It is always important to respect the ice at all times of the winter but its especially important on early and late ice. I always spend my first few weeks approaching early ice on foot or if possible, quad or snowmobile. Packing appropriate safety gear is something that I always have on my list at all times of the year.
WHAT TO FISH FOR
At this time of the year, I often have sleepless nights debating on which species to target. Keeping a well documented logbook of all my outings from prior years really helps. It plays is a big part in deciding what species to target on different days. Wind direction, barometric pressure, sky conditions, lure colour, air /water temperature, moon phase, time of day, date and location can be easily documented.
Once you have a few months and even years of notes you see patterns emerge. That increases your success rate and gives you confidence. Here is my first ice menu
NORTHERN PIKE
Some of our biggest pike of each ice season come in the first few weeks. Our main location focus is around whitefish spawning areas. Dead baits such as herring, anchovies, smelt, and mackerel positioned a few feet off the bottom on well known travel routes is extremely effective.
Having a few extra anglers with you allows you two run more lines which is extremely beneficial to cover more area. We will get our holes all drilled prior to first light to let the fish calm down. That means our baits are soaking well before the sun comes up.
BAIT POSITIONING CRITICAL
Our baits will be run in a straight line out of a point starting as shallow as six feet of water with our last bait as deep as 20 feet. I generally catch most of my pike in the six to15 foot range, believing the more active travelling fish are in these depths. These pike are suckers for dead baits on their travel routes as it presents an easy meal.
We also have another set of holes 30 yards from my tip ups. These our jigging holes, which we use to run and gun looking for a reaction bite. They are spaced 12 feet apart and we spend under a minute at each one.
One angler will jig a traditional quick strike rig , one will jig a big plastic 5-8inches long and one will jig a big rattle bait . If any of these baits produces a strike from a fish over 30 inches, we immediately all start jigging the same application. Its very important that you be quiet and walk softly while doing this technique, so you don’t spook fish around your tip up dead baits.
Often these fish will guard baits until they are ready to eat. So, when cleaning your tip up holes, approach quietly and only clean them as often as you must. They are way more effective being left in silence. Also attach bells to your flags so you get a sound alarm if its windy or your back face to the flag. This also eliminates deeply hooked fish from not getting to your tip up in a timely matter.
WALLEYE
My approach to the walleye setup is similar. The location stays the same as the pike as well as the depth. The few differences are our tip ups are switched out with jaw jackers. On the end we use jigs with shiners threaded on. That’s to ensure that when the jacker goes off the hook hits the mouth of the walleye.
We also use the same run and gun approach, but our lure selection is smaller, and we alternate lures more frequently. I usually make sure all the crew has three to five different lure set ups on different rods. Every time we take an unsuccessful trip around the holes, we immediately alternate baits.
LURE SELECTION
We always try to have one guy using a jig and threaded minnow to entice negative fish. Other options include jigging spoons, Jigging Raps, Acme Hyper Glides, three-to-five-inch plastic swimbaits on long shank jig heads. I really like the Acme Google eye. I believe the light rattle in the eye of the jig compliments the plastic swimbait at almost all times of the year. Don’t forget about rattle baits.
All of these setups are generally used through out the day unless its one specific tactic that’s obvious and we all stick on that program.
WHITEFISH
This is by far the best time of the year to catch and harvest a good feed of whitefish for the smoker. My late grandma Shmyr couldn’t wait for first ice every year knowing she would get her favorite fish to eat. Whitefish are late fall, early winter spawners and can be nonstop action on most days.
LOCATION
Shallow rock flats in two to six feet of water are prime spawning areas for the whitefish. Small spoons and tungsten jigs tipped with tiny plastics or maggots are all good setups for whitefish. You want to simulate small baitfish attacking their spawning beds. It makes them aggressive and usually strike hard.
There are days though you must slow down your jigging technique to small shakes with a tungsten jig. Jigging sequences consist of a quick pull up after shaking it on the bottom. Often, I run pike dead baits while fishing for the whitefish since a lot of big pike are near by to ambush the school of whitefish.
I wish you all a safe and successful hard water season. As always if you have any extra questions on these topics or angling topics in general always feel free to message me on social media. Take care and tight lines!
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