6. STAY IN THE LIGHT
If you only have a few hours to hit the ice, maximize your time
by heading out when the fish are feeding most actively. Key
here is the amount of daylight reaching the water column—and
the type of fish you’re targeting. Species such as walleye
and sauger feed most intensely at dawn and dusk, for example,
while crappie, perch, pike and whitefish are most active in
the middle of the day. During winter, in fact, the light conditions
beneath the ice and snow are similar to the ideal conditions
during the open-water season—namely, overcast days, when
most fish species feed more actively. That’s why winter
crappie, perch, pike and whitefish anglers often enjoy superb
success on sunny winter days when the same conditions during
the open-water season would shut down the fish. Indeed, the
optimal amount of light that causes pike to be most active is
closer to the illumination under the ice at midday in January
than it is at noon in the summer.
7. WAIT FOR THE WALLEYE
While dusk and dawn are the prime feeding periods for walleye,
dusk is the more active of the two. But this daily feeding frenzy
develops much earlier—usually 30 to 45 minutes before
sunset—than most anglers realize. That’s because
walleye are triggered to feed when the light fades fastest,
which in early and mid-winter is when the sun is sitting on
or just above the horizon. So make sure you’re out on
the ice at least an hour before that, waiting. That way, you’ll
often be catching the fish when other anglers are only just
walking onto the ice. Also be sure to pre-drill plenty of holes—covering
a variety of depths—in advance of this half-hour whirlwind
of activity so you can follow the wave of walleye.
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| Slab
structure: Underwater points are one of the best
winter spots for crappie |
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8. LOOK FOR THE LUNKERS
Winter is unquestionably the best time of the year to catch
lake trout because the fish are generally easy to get to, they
never stop feeding and you don’t need any special equipment.
Winter’s also the best time to catch a trophy laker of
eye-popping proportions if you concentrate on big lakes with
a history of producing big fish. You usually catch the largest
trout from the biggest lakes because the fish can find places
to hide from anglers for the number of years it takes them to
grow to trophy proportions. Bigger waters also offer a smorgasbord
of high-quality forage such as ciscoes, shad, smelt, suckers
and whitefish. Finally, big trout lakes typically have plenty
of bait-filled shallow areas the fish don’t inhabit in
the summer because the water is too warm. But that isn’t
a problem in the wintertime, and the plentiful food supply becomes
available to them.
9. STAY ON THE MOVE
Catching lake trout during the winter is easy. The hard part
is finding them. Many hardwater anglers spend far too much time
fishing over deep structure—underwater points and reefs
in the middle of the lake in 80 to 100 feet of water. Instead,
it’s much wiser to drill holes over and around structure
in moderately deep water of 20 to 40 feet. And since lake trout—particularly
the giants—are meat eaters, serve them a hearty, four-inch
tube jig, Williams Ice Jig or airplane jig in gold, silver or
white or a baitfish pattern. Finally, don’t forget that
lakers are never numerous, at least not compared with walleye,
pike and panfish, and they’re always on the move. So keep
mobile—30 minutes at one spot with no action means it’s
time to roll.
10. END WITH THE BEST
If you can only go fishing a few times this winter, make sure
it’s at the end of the season. As the amount of daylight
increases and the ice begins to honeycomb, most species—with
the exception of lake trout and whitefish, which spawn in the
fall—move toward the areas where they’ll eventually
lay their eggs. As a result, you’ll find perch, sauger
and walleye congregating in ever-greater numbers at the mouths
of inflowing creeks, rivers and streams, as well as along windswept,
rocky shorelines. Pike, on the other hand, start massing around
the mouths of large, shallow, weedy bays, while black crappie
flock toward small, black-bottomed coves or anywhere green pencil
reeds flourish in the spring. All of this makes for the best
ice fishing of the season. Just remember that the larger fish,
even the plump perch and crappie, are most likely carrying eggs.
So enjoy the frenzied activity—even keep a few small,
immature fish for dinner—but release the larger ones.
That way, we can all enjoy putting these ice-fishing tips to
use for many more years to come.
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