Ice Fishing

A couple of months ago, the boats had been put away, there was a break in the holiday activities, and I took my dog for his evening walk along the shores of our local lake.  Our stretch of bitterly cold weather continued, but it remained windy enough to keep the lake from icing over.  The existing shelf ice was under constant attack by the wind and breaking waves, and other than the wind, the only sound I was conscious of was the tinkling of the breaking ice, eroding faster than it could form.

It was a nice quiet moment, and it gave me pause to think about the possible upcoming ice season.  Weather, schedules and health, as well as reduced interest in the pursuit, had kept me off the ice for most of the previous 5 years.  What was once a Grand Adventure and a season to look forward to had become tedious, mundane, predictable and unimportant.  But the possibility of ice, so close to home, possibly in time for the Christmas/New Year's break, and on a lake that I personally knew to house many fine pike, was enough motivation for me to double-check my gear and prepare for another season on the ice.

Cold fronts and warm fronts have alternately and fiercely battled for supremacy since, and safe ice was slow to come to my area and has proven to be ephemeral so far this season.  But I have gotten out four times over a couple of widely spaced weekends, and while nothing super-exciting has happened, it's all been pretty pleasant, there's been some action, I've shared it with good friends, and it's been the only real fishing I've been able to engage in for quite a while.

The location for the first trip of the season was based simply on safety; I was running out of time off from work for the holidays, and I was antsy to actually do something.  A small local lake was reported to have safe ice; this lake is known for pan-fishing, for which I have little interest through the ice.  Second-hand information indicated the probable presence of pike; some appropriate live bait was obtained (although not without difficulty); and so a group tip-up outing was scheduled to be the First Trip of 2013.

We hit the ice just after dawn, walked past the pan-fishers (all of whom seemed to suffering from the same Cabin Fever), and set our traps along the lake's far shoreline.  The break showed itself to be steeper and deeper than expected, but soon the allowed number of tip-ups were in place, bracketing the break from shallows to depths, and just moments later the First Flag of 2013 announced the presence of the day's first strike.

First Flag of 2013

At this point, the thought always occurs that this could be The One, the biggest pike (or trout, or walleye...) of your career.  And while, so far, it hasn't successfully played out that way, it's wonderful to feel that spark of hope; and you realize why you're ice fishing.

And while this wasn't The One, it was the quarry of choice, and the rest of the morning was spent busily chasing a nearly constant succession of flags.  The fish weren't large (in fact, they were admittedly small), but it was inarguably fun.  And while I never would have kept it even in season, this largemouth bass was the first legal-sized fish I took in 2013:

This largemouth bass ate a golden shiner suspended over weeds in about 6 feet of water.

While I agreed this was a fun day, the fish were too small for my complete satisfaction, and so when I returned to the lake a couple of days later, I chose to set up in a new area.  I was by myself, and so I had a limited number of tip-ups in the water at a given time.  I compensated for this by taking advantage of the thin ice, staying mobile and drilling lots of holes.  For a strong half-day's effort I was rewarded with two flags; both were hit and run drive-by's, resulting in no hookups.  So while I was patiently awaiting a quality fish, I couldn't help but note to myself that I really did miss the fun of the previous outing's action.  So maybe one shouldn't leave fish to find fish; or perhaps one should simply appreciate the bird currently in hand.

Shortly thereafter we lost all of our safe ice, and even bad ice fishing wasn't possible.

Fortunately, it came back (although we're losing our ice, again), and I was able to hit our local lake this weekend.  As mentioned above, it's been several years since this has been possible for me.  But I looked forward to this because, about three years ago I caught my first really fine pike through this lake's ice; and that pike, in turn, motivated me to (try to) unlock the lake's open water pike fishery.  It was with renewed confidence and enthusiasm that I returned.

Have I mentioned that it has become extremely difficult to get live bait minnows?  I can't really complain, since there are sound biological/resource protection issues behind this difficulty.  But it has made preparing for a live-bait trip a logistical hurdle and has introduced another level of uncertainty into pulling off a successful trip.  That said, let's just say that I was unable to obtain any worthy bait on Friday or Saturday morning; and I was faced with the prospect of safe ice without bait.  Fortunately, friend KS had been supporting some leftover shiners and was available for a short trip on Saturday afternoon.

Have I mentioned that my local lake is an extremely popular urban fishery?  Or that a pond-ice hockey tournament was taking place near my fishing hole?  Or that several hundred of my closest fishing buddies (all afflicted with the same fever, and kept off other waters by deep snow and thin ice) descended on the same water?  Oh well, it was a beautiful, sunny day, and with just a small window available for our fishing, we didn't have to work too hard.  We spent our time with a couple of flags and another small pike, but there was enough activity to see that the best action was in shallow; and I did assist a young fisherman with his line management when a pike spooled his tip-up and then showed himself to be much larger at the hole than expected.  To his credit, the kid did great; he landed his biggest pike ever at 34 or 35 inches, and this fish reminded me, again, why I was out there, and why I fish.

Back home, I made a few calls and found a dwindling supply of minnows available at a local shop; I then secured a nice supply for the next day's efforts.

I hit the ice just before sunrise.  I set two traps shallow; and one in a high-confidence, deeper spot.  Things got off to a slow start, put when the first flag flew at 9 AM, I was once again deluded with visions of a monster pike.  In reality, it was more of an average pike, but it was a successful start, and I was pleased to have some action, because the others that were filtering out and setting up around and about me, weren't.

By 11 AM or so, little else had happened.  I was somewhat frustrated by my inability to move based on all the other fisherman/tip-ups around me, but I could also tell that not much was going on (and certainly nothing of any real interest or value.)  I had started to think about pulling lines and returning for the evening bite when KS found me out on the ice; he as ready to fish!  We fit in his traps, heading towards deeper water; I'd pretty well demonstrated that the pike were not active in the shallows this day.  Soon there-after, his two deeper traps sprung, yielding another small pike.  When his son and friends arrived, suddenly we had 12 traps in place and we were covering a large swath of water from 7 to 33 feet deep.  Hopes soared; it seemed like a pike could not move in the area with encountering one of our baits.  Success seemed inevitable.

Three hours later, yours truly came off the ice with only an additional flag/lost fish to show for it.

All the ice fishing I've done this year (and really, in the last five years) has been simple set-and-wait predator fishing, and I know I'm just fishing for possibly one truly worthwhile opportunity a season.  I'm not relying on luck and simply soaking baits; I'm trying to present desirable baits in precise locations.  But the general approach has been to maintain confidence in the baits, their location and presentation, and to simply be there, prepared, when that opportunity presents itself.  In the meantime, it's a fairly low-tech endeavor that doesn't require a lot of equipment, specialization, or cost.  And that in itself is a huge change from much of my regular fishing, or the way I used to approach ice fishing.  I used to be highly technical; ice fishing provides the most stable platform from which to present your offering; and I was consumed with making the perfect presentation in the perfect spot.  I learned a lot, but some of the lasting lessons I took home from these efforts were that you can only drill so many holes in a given outing; you can only carry so much gear in your sled; these efforts turn off a lot of your potential fishing partners; and there are other ways to enjoy yourself.

And so I've returned to ice fishing, but with my current simpler approach and humbler expectations.

Near the end of this weekend, KS' wife came out on the ice with her dogs, and you could tell she was doing a bit of a sanity check on us.  We'd done an awful lot of standing around in cold, slushy conditions, with little to nothing to show for it, and not much of a prospect for further action.

And yet perhaps she was swayed with my argument that ice fishing is so filled with promise!  Big fish are caught through the ice.  Sometimes, even by us.  This had not yet happened; if it were to happen, it would be in the future.  Therefore, we should continue fishing, so as to be present when it actually did happen.

Willem Dafoe was right when he stated, just before his reported death on the ice with John Lurie, that the best thing about ice fishing, is that it is so filled with possibility!  (If you're still reading, and you're confused, check out my 10/21/12 post.)

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Just to show you that good things are possible, and that ice fishing can honestly be fun, here are a few old pictures I've accumulated.  Most of my ice fishing has been done in the pre-digital age, and so good pictures are far and few between; but each of these represents a nice moment.

The first of many FINE brown trout over the course of a  few seasons.  Few others knew about these fish.

Every brook trout is special.

Enjoying the sunshine...

...until rudely interrupted by a brown.

Both kids got an early indoctrination.

Food chain fishing; last night's smelt is today's laker bait.

Laker on smelt violence.

Truly arctic conditions in Michigan's U.P.

You Say You Want a Resolution?

I’m not much of a New Year’s resolution maker (or keeper); I tend to make an on-going series of small behavioral choices in accordance with my principles and wants along the way.  Overall, this strategy has gotten me to a pretty comfortable place in life, albeit as an overweight, middle-aged guy with a pretty thin bank account and some room for personal improvement.  So I can (probably) rightly claim “overall success” in how I’ve conducted myself, but (definitely) not “perfection”. 

Recognizing this in this fresh New Year, as a matter of positive mental exercise, I recently made a list (of unspecified length) of Fishing Things I Want to do This Year.  At first I was reluctant to do so, since what I really want involves warm, tropical flat seas, sailfish, tuna and mahi, and appropriately matched, high quality gear.  Knowing that prospects for this in 2013 are slim, I thought thinking about the list would be a frustrating and unproductive endeavor.  But when I constrained my mind-set to realistic boundaries (geographic, economic, and ecologic), I realized quickly that I could still look forward to a bunch of fun.  My list thence came together quickly.

It’s approaching mid-January in West Michigan, and our ice has already come and gone.   It may or may not come back.  The boats are put away in storage, and it may or may not be wise to get them out.  Winter might be over.  Winter could last another two and a half months.  My current outdoor prospects are in-between.  Each viable fishing idea is compromised by some combination of convenience, safety, legality, access, wind and weather.  There’s no clear-cut way for me to take advantage of current conditions.

Oh well, I can turn to my list.  I can recall some previously documented desires, and I can celebrate the resolution(s) I’ve achieved.  I’m off to a pretty slow start so far in 2013, but I have “ice fished somewhere other than Reeds Lake.”  It has, after all, been years since I’ve attempted to ice fish anything other than my home waters.  While I didn’t take a legal fish in the 9+ hours I recently spent ice-fishing on local McEwen Lake, I did enjoy 17 or so fish flags; and I approached each one with the anticipation that I was about to be connected with my next fish of dreams.  This lake offered the first (and in my opinion, only) locally safe ice conditions.  Most of McEwen’s patrons seem to prefer pan-fishing, and so the real predators were (at least in theory) left for me.  Finally, this lake is largely undeveloped, and in the quiet conditions in which I fished, the lake offered a peaceful, restive setting in which I could await the next strike.

First flag of 2013!  Lots of action, but no keepers this day.

Watching for flags from a peaceful vantage point.

I also accepted a “job offer from a major outdoor goods supplier” this week.  Throughout the application process, the interview, and my acceptance, they made me feel really good about myself, my attitude and my talents.  I should start next month.  This will be a new experience, approached for fun and growth, in addition to whatever else I’ve got going at the moment.  I’m open to good new experiences, and I’m not beholden to the situation, so I shouldn’t be exposing myself to anything too bad.  And if I can’t fish, I might as well engage in fishing-related work, right?

While I think I’ll keep my specific list close to my chest, I’ll continue to periodically report on any progress, because I love fishing.  And that means Anticipate!  Participate! and Elaborate!

Anniversaries and Such...

In the “Strange but True” Category:

January 9, 2013

Happy Anniversary!  It’s been three years since I last touched a sailfish.

January 9, 2010.  About 12:30 PM.  Nice hat!  Sailfish on!

Now, while a co-worker thought it was girlishly suspicious that I knew it was the 3^rd anniversary of my last sailfish success, I had to share the fact that, during today’s lunch-break walk, and WITHIN THE PROBABLE MINUTE OF THE 3^rd ANNIVERSARY OF THE ACTUAL EVENT, my commemorative sailfish hat blew off my head and sailed across Monroe Avenue, just like my Glacier Guides hat blew into the Gulf Stream while fighting my dangerous and unpredictable billfish.

January 9, 2010.  About 12:35 PM.

Ahhhhh, fishing!