Fox River Times 2008 Ice Fishing Guide

Editor's Note: Hello, and thank you all for reading this year's FRT ice fishing guide. In this edition, I hope to give you some inside tips on ice fishing, and also some neat stories that I have experienced in the past few years while ice fishing. Even if you haven't or are not able to ice fish, I'm sure that you will find some itch to do so after reading this. So, enjoy this issue and have a great winter. As always, tight lines and warm feet.

Sam

The Shack: I'd like to start off by telling you about an adventure that happened in an incredibly awesome ice fishing shanty that two of my dad's friends from work own. Well the Shack as it's commonly referred to, was set up on a small lake that I described to you in an earlier issue, which is called Black Otter. Before me and my dad came to fish there, no fish have ever been caught in the Shack while it was being owned by my dad's friend, John Werner.

Well, we set up the tip-ups for northerns, and then drilled some holes to do some regular fishing in. We started fishing, and it seemed like nobody was getting any bites. I started to have someone nibble on my wax worm, but every time I set the hook, nothing was on the end of my line. We fished for awhile longer, then checked the tip-ups and moved the tip-ups to the other side of the Shack.

Near the end of the trip, I had another guy playing with my line, and this time to my surprise a little bluegill swimming at the end of my line. I got it in, we took some pictures, and I had the first ever fish caught in the Shack! Many thanks to John Werner for letting us spend the trip in his shack.

Prologue: Today the bluegill in the story, now named Shack is currently at home in my fish tank. Many of the people reading this right now have more than likely been able to meet Shack 1 or 2 times. That is the story of Shack.

One of the owners of the Shack, and reader of the FRT, John Werner.

The legendary and well known, Shack.


The place where it all happened, inside John Werner and Chris Satori's ice shanty.


Shack at his new habitat.



Beyer's Cove: This next spot is my favorite place to ice fish, because I practically know it like the back of my hand! I have been ice fishing on Beyer's Cove for two years now, and together our family has caught well over 300 fish on it. For those who have never been there, Beyer's Cove is a small cove that connects on to the massive Big Green Lake. It is a great holding spot for panfish, because there is a lot of weeds and cover in it. Because there are so many panfish, it also makes it a great spot for northern pike and other predators to feed on them.

I would say that the most plentiful panfish on Beyer's Cove at early ice is the yellow perch. We usually catch these perch on wax worms or spikes ( small red larvae), but the best bait for the biggest perch, is small finesse plastics made by Custom Jigs and Spins. I'll go into greater detail about perch on plastics later in the annual.

Another main panfish on the cove is bluegill and sunfish. My family and I have pulled many bull bluegills out of the water, and we also know that ice caught bluegills taste great on the table. Also the best bait for these is spikes over wax worms, because spikes seem to yield the biggest bluegill into biting. I have tried plastics for bluegill, but they always seem to ignore them.

The last species of panfish that we have encountered on Beyer's is the black crappie. Usually the ones that we catch are small 5'', but I had once pulled out a 9''. Crappie also taste great on the table, and for some reason ice caught fish taste better than summer fish because the amount of algae in the water is depleted. Occasionally we catch a few small bass bringing up 5''. Below are photos of ice fishing the cove.

My dad posing with a decent bluegill caught from the cove.



Me unhooking a hand sized bluegill.


My mom and sister with a perch duo.






Baits and Lures: I bet many of you haven't ice fished before, so you're probably wondering, what do you use? The answer is pretty simple, you just have to have one thought in mind. That is that in the winter, fish have less of an appetite and your lures should be smaller than their open water counter parts. By smaller, I mean size 12 or less. There are many companies that supply ice fishing jigs, and I guess that it all just depends on what you're fishing for. For panfish jigs and plastics, I would highly recommend Northland Tackle and Custom Jigs & Spins.



I'm Lost, Where's the Loony bin?: I pinched myself, as I walked onto the 2 and 1 half inch sheet of frozen water. It was the day after Thanksgiving for heaven sakes! I thought we were asking for an ice bath, but it held Dave, so I made my way onto it. As we took a walk through the "bucket town", my dad and I set up camp as Dave walked on. There were already some holes drilled, so my dad, Dave, and I set down our buckets, (Dave had his tent) and started fishing. My dad and I caught a bluegill almost immediately, as Dave was still getting his gear ready and talking to fellow fisherman. At the start, nothing big retreated out of their underwater hideaways, and Dave was convinced "those big northerns" drove them away.


A little later, Dave called me over to his tent, and pointed straight down to an ice hole. I did as he told me, wiggled my jig and waxie combo, and later pulled up a chunky 9" bluegill. The thing ripped off drag from my ultralight! I plopped it into the bottom of my five gallon pail, and added some water. A little later, we added 5 more keepers. Eventually, we had two employees, as a little girl and her dad added yet, more perch and bluegill. Dave opened his tent and said, "It's official, we're having a fish fry tonight!" I asked him how many we needed, and Dave became a calculator! "Well, if we want 4 fish per person, or 8 fillets, and there's 7 people, then we need 28 fish." "Oh, that's easy," I replied.


By the end of the day, we had 35 keepers, and nearly one hundred others still are swimming, as we threw them back. When we got home, Dave used his mad fillet skills and got them done in a snap. Later, my mom deep fried them, and what a dinner we had! I would like to thank my dad and Dave for making this whole trip possible. Below are some pictures of the day after Thanksgiving trip.



Some of the mess of panfish that we had.


The 9" 'gill posed in front of Dave's garage.


When it was all said and done, we were able to have a nice fish fry.

Thanks to field editor Chris Satori, we have some interesting ice fishing facts to tell you about:

Here are some interesting factoids for the FRT 2008-2009 ice-fishing annual…
Excerpts from the In-Fisherman 2009 Ice Fishing Guide as reported from a 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation the US Fish and Wildlife Service (completed every 5 years).
· There are 1.7 million U.S. ice-fisherman(16 and older) annually – this is just 6.8% of the 25.4 million freshwater anglers nationwide
· There are an estimated 720,000 U.S. ice-fisherman that are ages 6 to 15 years old for a grand total of approximately 2.4 million U.S. ice-fisherman (and women)
· Anglers 16 and older spent an estimated 14 million days on the ice
· Approximately 660,000 of the 1.7 million Ice Anglers purchased equipment in 2006
· Minnesota leads the country with 479,000 Ice Anglers (age 16 and older) with a total of 5.1 million days on the ice
· Wisconsin is #2 with 278,457 Ice Anglers and 3.2 million days on the ice
· Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan account for 57% of the Ice Anglers in the U.S.
· Florida reported 16,833 ice-fisherman (snowbirds heading back North for an ice-fishing vacation?)
· No ice-fishing activity was reported in DC, GA, HI, MO, MS, SC, TN, TX and VA