Ice Fishing Articles

The Mississippi Is A Good January Destination by Ted Peck

The concept of finding a hot bite in early January is an oxymoron which only a moron could believe is possible. 'Hot' is a relative term when the topic is activity levels in cold blooded creatures. Now is the time when a day on the ice usually starts out with slow fishing then slacks right off from there. Fish in 33 degree water don't need to feed often or eat very much. They can sometimes be goaded into striking, but the strike window is relatively small. In 70 degree water an aggressive fish may streak five feet to smack a bait. In near-freezing water the same fish may move mere inches then merely gernip your offering with the lightning reflexes of a gutter wino. Conversely...

Getting Ready for Ice Fishing by Dale Helgeson

It's that time of year again. When you wake up in the morning and have to scrape your windows before you drive to work in the dark and you are lucky to see daylight when you get home from work. But there is one good thing about this time of year. It is going to start forming ice. After the ice starts it is time to break out the ice fishing gear. Before any ice fishing season you should go through all your equipment and test it at home before venturing out on any lake. This will save you many headaches and cold fingers out on the lake. First of all I check my ice fishing clothes and wash them before the season starts. I make sure my long underwear is in good condition as well as all my o...

Ten Ice Fishing Tips and Techniques by Steve Ryan

Everyone can stand to catch a few more panfish through the ice. However, ice anglers typically settle into a routine when they head out onto the ice. They catch several fish and then the action slows down or stops entirely. Maybe they change depths, colors, or holes a few times but that is about it. Once they stop catching fish based upon this routine, they quit and blame it on the fish - "they just stopped biting." Prior to muttering this phrase again, try the following tips and techniques. 1. Vertical to Horizontal. The style of one's ice jig is just as important as its color. Most anglers are accustomed to using a tear-dropped shaped jig that hangs vertically in the water, such as Jamm...

Ice Fishing Ideas For Finicky Fish by Bob Jensen

Fish under the ice, just like fish in open water, sometimes get finicky. It seems that they just don't want to open their mouths to take the bait we have down there. Here are some ideas for getting fish to eat your bait when they don't seem to want to. First of all, if they're not eating the bait you're showing them, show them something else. However, showing them something else doesn't necessarily mean you need to change baits, you just might need to change the way you're showing them the bait. For instance, let's say you're fishing walleyes and you have a Buck-Shot Rattle Spoon down there. You can see on your depth finder that fish are coming in and looking at the bait. They're ...

Lure Action For More Ice-Fishing Action by Bob Jensen

It's that time in the ice-fishing season when we really need to start fine-tuning our presentations if we want to experience ice-fishing success. The easy ones have been caught, and the remaining fish have been pounded pretty good by this point of the season, especially on the community holes or if you're fishing out of a shelter that hasn't been moved. This is when lure action become a very important consideration. Perhaps the most important tool when you're trying to determine the appropriate lure action is a good sonar unit. A good sonar will reveal fish and your lure. How the fish react to your lure will give you some clues as to proper lure action. On my last ice-fishing trip my...

Camera Or Flasher For Ice Fishing? by Ted Peck

There is no doubt electronics will improve your ice fishing success by at least 75 percent. Both an underwater camera and sonar flasher unit will help you put more fish on the ice. Which is better? Ask two old bucketeers what they think about either electronics or choice of underwear and you'll eventually get the same response. Camera or flasher? Boxers or briefs? Depends. If you're an ice fishing addict, the obvious answer is "both". The downside of this response is two-fold : you can only carry so much gear and the checkbook contains a limited number of checks. At $300-500 per unit you may have to choose like a wise Latina. You might base choice on how deep you usually fish...

Walleyes Come as No Fluke by Brian "Bro" Brosdahl

Brian "Bro" Brosdahl with Mark Courts Admittedly, I'm a meat and potatoes sort of guy. I'm eyeing the porterhouse steak on the menu long before the canary food, organic "meals under 500 calories". In fact, I'll take the whole right side of the menu, please. This instinctive weakness for hearty meat translates to my walleye fishing as well. Nine out of ten times I'm elbowing my way to the biggest minnow, not thinking much about soft plastic alternatives. Give me minnows, or give me death…or perhaps something less dramatic, but along those lines. With that said, I mean no disrespect to guys who put their trust in plastics, sometimes choosing them over live minnows, leeches, and cra...

Trout thru the Ice - Just the Basics with Brad Bricco by Steve Ryan

The bend in the rod foretold the tale of the tape. This was not the pull of a walleye or even a pike for that matter. This fish had a purpose, which did not include making an appearance on the topside of the ice. Jenny fought the fish with all the skill of a professional. After a tense ten minute fight, Jenny stood triumphant on the ice with her fish in hand. Brad Bricco, our fishing guide for the day, stood by with a Cheshire grin. If there was a cannery on the loose, I know who ate it. Bricco gave a nod, knowing full well that he had accomplished his goal for the day. He had put Jenny on her first steelhead thru the ice and she did the rest. Not to rest on her laurels, Jenny qui...

Trophy Tip-Up Tips by Dale Helgeson

The ice is here and you want to get into some bigger fish through the ice. There are several options from the great sturgeon spearing on Lake Winnebago to jigging up trophy walleyes on the Mud Flats of Mille Lacs. But the number one preferred way to chase trophy fish through the ice is with tip-ups. Tip-ups come in many different shapes and sizes from stick tip-ups, wood tip-ups, to plastic tip-ups. I prefer to use Frabill Pro Thermal tip-ups. They are insulated round plastic tip-ups that cover the hole. Being orange they are visible from a great distance above the ice but the bottom of them is mainly white insulation so it will blend in with the snow on the ice. Covering the hole with an ...

The Art of Drilling Holes by Jason Mitchell

When you look at some of the best ice anglers, there often is some strategy in how and where they drill holes. Ice anglers might not be able to drift or troll but they can drill holes in a pattern and discipline themselves to fish the holes in a set time to cover water. There is a method behind the madness and successful anglers often have a strategy behind the drilling. Just drilling a bunch of holes for the sake of drilling holes can be counter productive if there is no purpose. The reality is that some of the better days I have had on the ice were days where I didn't have to move a lot and was able to catch a lot of fish out of a handful of holes. For whatever the reason, there wa...

Put More Fish On The Ice! by Bob Jensen

There are several different species of fish that anglers chase through the ice. Some anglers like to catch walleyes, other like to get after perch. Pike are popular in some places, and crappies and other types of panfish are favored in others. Different species of fish respond to different presentations. Walleyes like spoons, panfish like tiny jigs, and pike like natural baits. If you're targeting a particular species of fish, you need to employ a technique that that specie is most likely to respond to. However, there are some basic principles of fishing that you need to keep in mind regardless of what fish you want to catch. Following are some of those basic principles. The ...

Browns & Bows Though the Ice by Eric Haataja

If you've never experienced the thrill of catching browns or rainbow trout threw the ice, now is the time. These fish are found in almost all of the Lake Michigan Harbors, and also up in many of the rivers. Browns and Rainbows are some of the best fighting fish you'll ever catch threw the ice. SAFETY Before I go into how, where, why, and what to use I want to speak of what I feel is most important when ice fishing. Safety, it's always better to be safe than sorry, especially on rivers or harbors where there is constant current and ice shifting. Many harbors have air orators or sewers that dump into them, though they can be fish magnets they can also be a bad idea to fish too c...

End of the Season Ice-Fishing by Bob Jensen

This is the time of year when some ice-anglers start to wind down their ice-fishing. Although there is still lots of ice-fishing action remaining, for some reason, about this time of year, some anglers decide to hang the rods up for the season and start getting ready for open water. Those folks that continue to ice-fish can experience some really good action if they keep a few things in mind. Following are some of those things. Remember that the schools of fish have been picked apart. If you've been fishing a spot that has a lot of permanent houses on it, now is the time to start moving around. The anglers in those permanent houses have been catching and releasing or catching and keepin...

Hand to Fin Combat by Brian "Bro" Brosdahl

A proven pattern for hooking gargantuan pike during early ice Up above, I tiptoe across the frozen shallows maintaining a low profile. Stealth is a big part of the game. Down below, however, it's more like lions in the Coliseum tearing and tossing-down everything with blood running through its veins. That's what it's like in early winter when northern pike slash through the shallows with hearty appetites and an equal amount of recklessness. These apex predators spent most of late autumn roaming the basin, tracking along offshore humps and deeper secondary breaks. With the flip of a switch, though, they head straight for the shallows - 4 to 12 feet of water - when the surface water s...

Search And Destroy by Tony Roach

"New Wave" Fish Finding Tactics on Ice When you spend your winters guiding on a huge lake like Central Minnesota's Mille Lacs, doing all the things it takes to find biting fish can test your resolve. There's only one way to the fish - drilling lots and lots of holes. My guides and I sometimes spend entire days doing nothing but searching-one guy drills, another dude scans with an underwater camera. Often, we'll grind out three or four hundred holes in the space of a 9 hour day. It isn't always pretty, and more often than not, the best way to find fish isn't the easiest way. But man does it pay off. We can usually stay well ahead of the crowds, keeping big schools of untouched fish to our...

Late Ice Panfish Only a Spoon Feed Away by Brian "Bro" Brosdahl

When the Right Flash and Flutter Out-Produce All Others Pulling panfish from frigid water with tiny treats is, no doubt, the modern ice angler's most popular ploy. But while fishing in micro-mode is a most excellent tactic, there are periods when the flash and flutter of a falling spoon will out-produce any ultra-miniature jig - especially during feeding furies near the end of winter. Plucking panfish with stamped steel and molded metals is nothing new. In fact, anglers have been hauling multitudes of spoon-caught species through holes since man first fashioned the tools needed for shaping these precious metals. But there's more to duping panfish with spoons than meets the eye. The best...

Jigging Success for Winter Pike by Steve Ryan

Pack away the tip-ups. Grab a jig rod in one hand, a small box of lures in the other and set off on the ice for a full day of pike action. No bait necessary. With a basic understanding of the movement of pike throughout the ice season and a few simple jigging techniques and tackle requirements, winter pike are easy prey. Sure, everyone has enjoyed some good days of pike fishing while monitoring a full allotment of tip-ups. Tip-ups are set early in the morning along a weed edge. You clear the holes of ice once or twice throughout the day and maybe even check on the bait. The tip-ups are never moved the entire day. The only fish that you have a chance to catch are those few pike patr...

PANFISH ON ICE by Bob Jensen

Throughout the Midwest, panfish are abundant and they're popular. Anglers year ‘round like to catch panfish, and the winter season provides lots of opportunities to do so. Lakes, ponds, backwaters of rivers, they all hold panfish in good numbers. Here are some ideas as to how you can catch more panfish through the ice. First, it is important to identify what type of panfish you will be after. Different types of panfish call for different presentations. You need to determine what type of panfish is most abundant in the body of water being fished. A quick stop at the baitshop or a conversation with other anglers can help out here. Now consider the fish itself. If you are going to be c...

Ice Fishing Feeding Frenzy by Fishing The Wild Side

Written By Doug Newhoff Fish have a brain about the size of a pea. They have a stomach that's roughly 20 times that large. Fortunately for those of us who love to fish through the ice, one feeds the other. While a crappie or perch isn't capable of figuring out where to find a meal when the pickings get slim in the middle of a Midwestern winter, sustenance is survival, and instinct drives those fish to feed. In the aquatic world, that means reacting to visual, audio and olfactory (sense of smell) stimulation. Most anglers have brains about 1,000 times larger than fish, yet we aren't that much different when it comes to satisfying our appetites. We've been known to rush into re...

Tip-Ups For More Fish by Bob Jensen

Just as there are a lot of ways to catch fish in the open water season, there are numerous ways to catch them through the ice. In open water or through the ice, many anglers like to get as many lines in the water as permitted, as this increases the chances for getting bit. In open water, many anglers will put a bobber rod or dead rod out while they throw a jig or crankbait from an anchored position. Putting a tip-up out while jigging through the ice is kind of like putting a bobber rod out in open water. The only difference is, instead of waiting for the bobber to go down, you're waiting for the flag to go up. Employing a tip-up is both effective and fun. Here's how you can take advantag...

Four Tips For More Ice-Fishing Success by Bob Jensen

When a person goes fishing, they want to catch a fish, or better yet, several fish. That's true whether we're talking ice-fishing or open-water fishing. Sure it's fun to watch the wildlife and the setting sun and spend time with family and friends, but it's a lot more fun to catch fish than not catch fish when you go fishing. Here are some ideas for catching more fish through the ice in the next few months. When fishing is slow, get as many lines in the water as possible. Be very sure that you know the rules of where you're fishing when it comes to the number of lines you can have in the water. Some states in the Midwest allow two lines, others permit more. Know how many you can hav...

Mid-Winter Perch by Bob Jensen

This is the time of year, in many areas of the Midwest, when fishing slows down for some folks. In fact, many anglers believe that the best ice-fishing of the year is under first ice and that the rest of the season just isn't very good. While it is true that early ice can be very productive, if you hang up the ice-rods and auger now, you're missing some great action, and much of the time that action will be provided by hungry perch looking for something to eat. Following are some ideas for putting a few perch on the ice right now. In the past few years I've been in on some really good perch bites with some of the best ice-anglers in the world. Every now and then even the best ice-angler...

Baiting Technique Turns Fish to Stone by Brian "Bro" Brosdahl

Creating "Medusa's Head" with maggots popularized by ice fishing pacesetter Brian "Bro" Brosdahl Warning to panfish everywhere: Don't look into her eyes, or at that living crown of writhing maggots for that matter. If you're lucky, it's Stonehenge for you, and a safe sink to the bottom of the lake. If you're unlucky, it's a treble hook in the maw and a one way ticket to the frying pan. What Brian "Bro" Brosdahl has dubbed "baiting up with Medusa's Head" is stonewalling giant panfish across the Ice Belt. The finished package, as the name implies, mimics, in a miniaturized way, the slithering snakes that turned Greek hairdressers into geologists…BC. Medusa's Head, ala Bro, is fashi...

Ice Jigging Pan Fish Techniques by Dale Helgeson

It is definitely getting to be that time again. The snow is starting to fall temperatures are dropping and ice is forming on the lakes. First ice is a very exciting time to fish every year. The anticipation to fill your bucket full of fish is exciting but there are several techniques that will increase your chances for success. The first thing is you can't be set on just one jigging technique. There are several techniques to try. One of my favorites is a 6-12 inch raise with a slow drop. I will make a quick 6-12 inch raise of my rod tip sometime only 3-6 inches works as well but then slowly lower the rod tip. You should lower it as slow as possible. If you think you are going to slow...

Top Ice Toys by Steve Ryan

Lets face it; life on the ice can be cold and boring. What one needs to add excitement to the icefishing game are gadgets. The thicker your wallet, the more gadgets you can afford. Mind you, I have had plenty of fun catching fish with nothing more than a homemade spud bar, a make shift jig rod and a handful of ice jigs. However, if I had my choice, the following toys would accompany me on the ice. First, since my wish list is long, I would start with a Yamaha Kodiak 450 ATV four-wheeler. ATV's expand one's range and make one more likely to try multiple locations until active fish are found. They are also great safety devices. The old adage that 'no ice is save ice to drive a truck o...