Daydreams about Ice Things

It happens every year. Usually about this time. Sometimes sooner. I see posts from friends about days spent on ice-covered lakes or read about ice fishing events, and my mind strays north. Way north. One minute I'm focused on a task at my computer, working from my home in Georgia. Then my mind strays to a small nameless lake in Northern Minnesota, a reservoir in the Black Hills or the edge of Presque Isle Bay in Pennsylvania, where I'm on bundled in winter gear, kneeling on ice, holding a tiny rod and starting intently at a my graph.

Soon I snap out of it and get back to whatever I had been doing, but it doesn't take much to send me back to wherever I just was or to jump to somewhere else. Sometimes I can look at a few of a buddy's posts or visit Jeff Sundin's fishing reports to do a bit of vicarious fishing and get it out of my system. At least that's what I tell myself. It probably actually makes things worse.

It really hit me this week when I realized the St. Paul Ice Fishing and Winter Sport Show is this weekend (starts tomorrow afternoon). It's a giant show that sort of kicks off the season (although folks way to the north and at high elevations in the West have been ice fishing for a couple of weeks now) and is show I've always wanted to attend. I'm hopeful that some year it will be a good fit for me.

The ice dreaming has been worse for the past couple of years because I haven't done any of the real stuff. I made a few multi-day trips north per winter for several years to fish, take photos and gather story material, but ice fishing hasn't fit with work needs for the past couple of winters. I've mostly gone south instead of north to fish during the winter, which most folks would say is the sensible thing to do anyway.

I enjoy ice fishing way to much for a guy who lives in Georgia. I even bought an auger, ice scoop and sled a couple of years ago, and I already had the clothes, rods, electronics and lure. So I could drive north and be self sufficient if need be. For the moment, I guess I'll just keep dreaming and hopefully will find good reason pack up the ice stuff and head toward ice country some time this winter!

Ouachita Variety

Last week's travel to the Ouachita Mountains delivered wonderful variety, not only in species caught but in the types of fishing experiences I got to enjoy in short order.

The species variety would be hard to argue. I added green sunfish, spotted bass, smallmouths, walleyes, pumpkinseeds and both black and white crappie to this year's catch list in three days of fishing. Experience-wise, I got to spend an afternoon and a morning on Lake Ouachita bass fishing, an afternoon wading the Ouachita River for stream bass, and a full day on the lake fishing Lindy's new Livebait Jig with crawlers and minnows for walleyes, crappie, bluegills and whatever else bit.

The bass fishing was made extra fun by the fact that I got to spend time in the boat with Alton Jones. That always equates to a lot of learning and great opportunities for gathering photos and story material. Far beyond that, I simply enjoy spending time with Alton and he invariably encourages me in many ways.

The jig/bait fishing was similarly fun because I got to spend a day with longtime Minnesota guide Jeff Sundin. I've spent several days fishing with Jeff, but mostly on the ice. He taught me a new approach, and based on all the fish we caught, you'd sure never know that he'd never been to Lake Ouachita before last week. I look forward to experimenting more with the Lindy Livebait Jig.

The highlight of the river outing had to be standing in a single spot and catching three species of bass (largemouth, smallmouth, spot) on the same Rebel Crawfish. None were big, but all were big fun!

A Dozen Delightful Days

Yesterday, I recapped half a dozen specific favorite fish from 2014, so today I thought I'd highlight a few of my favorite days on the water. When I looked back, though, I had a hard time narrowing it to a few. In fact, I picked a dozen, and I'd have a hard time ranking those, which only serves to remind me what a blessing it is to get to travel and fish and write fish stories for a living. And even with a dozen stellar days listed, I could have included several others. Listing is roughly in calendar order. Where a fuller post from the day exists, I've included "Blog Post" link.

Alabama Baitcaster Crappie - TJ Stallings and I spent a crazy fun day catching giant black crappie on Road Runner Rollin' Runners matched with 4-inch swimbaits, all on baitcasting gear with 14-pound test. Most weighed 2 pounds or more. Two broke the 3-pound mark. Blog Post

Bass Crazy Hobie Day - Nathaniel and I got to spend a couple of days with the Hobie Kayaks crew, trying out boats and taking photos, and enjoyed some seriously fast action bass fishing on private waters in South Alabama. In case you've ever wondered, fishing with your son, each in your own little Hobie Pro Angler, and catching more bass than you count, is seriously fun.

Wading the White - During last year's Gaston's trip, Nathaniel and I spent half a day fishing on our own, and as much as I always enjoy going out with the guides, there was something extra fun about wading shoals straight out from the resort, picking our own spots and catching a bunch of trout on Rebel Crawfish and Minnows and Ugly Bugs. Blog Post

Dry Run Farewell - No fishing for me on this outing. It was Nathaniel's final two-hour visit to his
favorite youth-only stream in Arkansas before he turned 16, and he managed to catch a huge and beautiful brown trout.

Niagara Slam - I mentioned this day with Capt. Frank Campbell yesterday because it included a brown trout that was one of my favorite individual fish from 2014. We mostly fished for smallmouths, and I'd guess we caught 50-plus fish that range from about 3 pounds to a weighed 5-15. Then, we put a cap on the day by running up the river and adding a steelhead and a lake trout.

Deadwood Finale' - Simple and fun. Wading right through Deadwood, South Dakota with friends from Cabela's and then exploring the canyon just downstream of town and catching more than our share of beautiful brown trout. Blog Post

Smallmouths in Sight - Clear, shallow water in the Sturgeon Bay areas and loads of big smallmouths absolutely locked in. Let's just say that we put the new Ugly Stik Elite outfits to a really good test that day!

El Salto, El Grande - This is another one I mentioned yesterday because it included my biggest largemouth in several years. Often you have to choose to go after numbers or target big fish. Paul Davis of Abu Garcia and I didn't have to pick on day one of my trip to Angler's Inn, which yielded 70 fish, including my 9-2, before lunch! Blog Post

Splendid Sequatchie - One of my favorite kinds of fishing is wet wading a cool-water stream for multiple species with spinning tackle, and the day I spent with Pat Roberson was that style of fishing at it's very best. We both fished with a single lure all day, and we caught countless fish and nine different species. Blog Post

Big Snowbird Plan Change - Nathaniel and I thought our day was done before it started when a muddy dirt road prevented us from getting to the delayed harvest section of Big Snowbird Creek. We instead waded a downstream section that probably hadn't been stocked for a couple of months, but the fish were surprisingly plentiful and quite cooperative, and we had the stream to ourselves. Blog Post

Asher's Birthday Outing - Asher and I only caught 10 trout in a pretty full day, but it was his first North Carolina trout outing, and it was just plain fun spending the day together knee deep in a stream. We also were celebrating his 10th birthday, so catching 10 fish was kind of cool. Blog Post

Ice Season Start - Going back only a couple of weeks, I quickly forgot about my nine bonus hours in MSP airport after I got on the ice with Jeff Sundin and Jon Thelen of Lindy. The first crappie came moments after I dropped a line in a hole, and the crappie/sunfish action never let up. The weather was also mighty nice, for ice fishing, and it was just plain fun being back out there. Blog Post

Meet You Halfway Crappie

As much as I like playing the coaxing game and trying to figure out what combination of lifts and twitches will make a fish bite, I like it even better when they are super aggressive, like they were this morning. The crappie did get fussier as the day wore on, but for the first couple of hours, if there were fish on the graph when I began lowering my bait, chances were good that at least one would start coming up before the lure got very far down, and if I just stopped it halfway down, they fish would come all the way up and attack it. It was that simple. No waiting. No coaxing. No rejection. They'd just come up and grab the bait, which is just plain fun.

I had said yesterday that we would be walleye fishing today. Plans shifted a bit, and the walleye day is now tomorrow, but Plan B, which was orchestrated by Jeff Sundin, worked out far better than most people's A plans. I really don't have any idea how many fish we caught -- most of which were released like the one in the clip above. I actually wish I'd kept a rough tally of my own fish, just to know. I only know we caught a bunch. I caught almost all my fish on a Watsit Grub body rigged on Lindy Bug or Toad jighead.

Pan-Tastic Ice Season Start

Spent a mighty fun day today catching bluegills and crappie with Jeff Sundin and Jon Thelen of Lindy Fishing. We caught a lot of fish, and while the temperature was pretty low (mid teens, I think), the breeze was only slight and it was plenty comfortable fishing on the open ice. It also snowed just enough last night and today that the ice had some snow on it for traction, which is good because I forgot my cleats at home. Mighty good start for an ice season, I'd say.

I used a Lindy Fat Boys jig all afternoon and caught a nice mix of both species. The fish were in fairly deep water, but the most active ones were at least a few feet off the bottom. Through mid-afternoon, the bite got really steady, and the crappie especially were charging hard when they decided to eat. Just before dark, we had to work a little harder to persuade fish to bite.

Walleyes tomorrow and Thursday.

Tough to Quit

Jeff Sundin was right. It's far better to have to quit fishing when you really don't want to than to endure the end of a day when you are eager to be done. Still, pulling big 'gills from little holes in the ice is just so fun that I had a hard time resolving to reel my jig up once and for all. The sun was sinking, though, and the day's work was done, so I bid the ice, the crappie and the bluegills farewell.

We actually spent the first half of today on a little trout lake. The trout were fairly evasive, but it was
a fun morning outing on a beautiful walk-in lake, and Jon Thelen did manage one really pretty rainbow, which attacked a Lindy Slick Jig/Watsit Grub combination. From Jon's report, it fought like a very angry fish and felt like it was even bigger than it was. I hope to give Minnesota trout lakes another try some time.

Homeward bound tomorrow. Word has it we got a lot of snow at home (Georgia), so I'm hopeful my flight is on time and that the roads from the airport all the way to my house, 90 miles to the north, are cleared by the time I'm ready to get on them.

I look forward to my next ice adventure, whenever that turns out to be. More likely than not, it'll be next season. You never know, though!

Cold Weather; Hot Fishing

Because cold front conditions legitimately do affect fish behavior under the ice, just as they do in most other fishing settings, fishermen have a general perception that extreme cold equals tough fishing. That's not always true, as Jeff Sundin has seen for the last month or more. Temperatures in Northern Minnesota have been brutally cold (even for Northern Minnesota), but it has been that way every day, which has made conditions stable the fish's behavior predictable.

Jeff has shown me that first hand for the past couple of big days, with jumbo bluegill and nice crappie that haven't been the least bit shy about eating. This morning it was -25 when I woke up and -20 when we started fishing. Afternoon high was 10. We began catching fish soon after putting down baits.

We're also not having to go super finesse or work the fish forever. I caught my fish on a Lindy Bug matched with a waxworm. Jeff caught most his with a Watsit Grub. Jon Thelen, who I joined in a shelter most of today, mixed up a Lindy Micro Slick Jig and Tungsten Toad. The fish were deep, probably as deep as they'll be all winter, but they weren't at all shy about biting.

While bluegills and crappie definitely have been the main attraction, I managed to land my first-ever tulibee today (hard fighting and really fun). I also added a rock bass to my 2014 fish list. Those two fish brought the total to nine. Maybe I can reach double digits tomorrow!

My Sort of Travel Day

Typically travel days aren't my favorites, but today has been quite fun. Long, no doubt. But fun. The start was good simply because it was eventless. Driving through Atlanta and then working my way through airport parking, check-in and security were smooth, and my plane took off on time.

The flight itself was more enjoyable than most because I ended up sitting beside a fly shop manager and guide from Montana who was flying home from his first fishing trip to Chile. I enjoyed lots of good conversation about trout, out West, in South America and in the Southeast -- and about ice-fishing.

Flight two was fun too because I had my own row, which meant I could look out the window AND have space. Flying from Minneapolis to Bemidji, the plane never goes terribly high, so you can watch the landscapes from start to finish. I enjoyed seeing the snowy fields and forests and the frozen, snow-covered lakes, including roads and footpaths leading to villages of ice huts.

From Bemidji I drove an hour or so through beautiful snowy Northwoods before meeting Jeff Sundin, stopping just long enough to check into my hotel and change clothes and then heading for a lake. We only had a couple of hours of fishing time, but that was plenty to catch several bluegill and crappie and to get some good photo work. There aren't many days that I start at my home in North Georgia and finish on the ice, catching fish.

I'm looking forward to a couple of full days of fishing, beginning tomorrow!

Northbound Plane

Jeff Sundin with a pretty northern Minnesota bluegill

Come Monday, I'm once again airport bound to travel well to the north for a few days of ice play. I'm looking forward to spending time with Jeff Sundin in northern Minnesota, where the outlook for lows around zero and highs approaching 20 would be an absolute heat wave, were it to hold true.

It has been cold there. Seriously cold. However, walleyes and panfish alike have bit well from the reports I have read. The combination of major slush problems through the first half of the season and brutal cold through most of the winter has kept fishing pressure comparatively light this year, and seemingly that has been good for the bite.

I'm not sure yet what we'll be targeting. Walleyes? Crappie? 'Gills? Whatever it is, I'll be ready. I've already bought my license, which begins the very hour I'm scheduled to land, so if it turns out to be practical to hit the ice for a while on Monday afternoon, I'll be ready to go.

Watch here, on my facebook fishing page and on my Twitter feed for pictures and reports.

Anticipating Ice

With more cold temperatures creeping into the North Georgia forecast and plenty of other signs that fall is giving way to winter, I probably should be scouting opportunities to travel to Florida to fish for bass or maybe South Louisiana to chase redfish or speckled trout. I suppose I'm not that sensible, though, because instead I find myself looking at 10-day forecasts in places like Deer River, Minn., Erie, Pa. and Granby, Colo., hoping to see good ice-forming outlooks and wondering how the lakes are coming along.

I like to watch fishing reports posted by Jeff Sundin, a northern Minnesota fishing guide who gets regular reports from other anglers and always begins driving the countryside and checking ice conditions first-hand around this time of year. Jeff is careful about where he walks and doesn't fish before it's prudent, but once he starts seeing ice, he'll begin stepping onto shallow margin areas and may check the thickness with a chisel, and he has a lot of eyes around the area that contribute to his annual "ice watch."

Meanwhile, back in Georgia, I find myself dreaming and scheming about possible northern excursions to fish through the ice as I re-spool little spinning reels and restock ice lure boxes. Maybe it's my native Minnesota blood, but I'm awfully fond of bundling up and walking out on the ice for someone who grew up in Florida and calls Georgia home. No ice plans have been in stone for this winter, but I suspect it won't be long.

Early Bluegill Bite

I fished this morning with Deer River guide Jeff Sundin and hit a great morning bluegill bite. In fact Jeff had his first big 'gill in the ice before my bait was all the way down. We caught 'em steadily through mid-morning before the bite began tapering. We caught a few late-morning fish, including bluegill, crappie and one small bass.
Jeff caught most of his fish on Lindy Toads, tipped with waxworms. I had a big time trying out the new 1/32-ounce Lindy Watsit Jig, which worked every bit as well as I thought it would. I'm pretty eager to put the same little Watsit Jigs to work on the bluegills and trout back home.
Ice adventure No. 1 for this winter is over now, and I fly home tomorrow.  Time to thaw out a bit, sort some photos, write a few fish stories and simply enjoy a few days at home.

High of 72 Today -- Ice Fishing in a Week

With 70s as forecast highs for the next couple of days, it's sort of hard to believe that at this time next week I'll be grabbing my last couple of hours of sleep before venturing out onto Minnesota's Upper Red Lake to go ice fishing for walleyes. I just read an Upper Red report, though, and the ice is between 6 and 10 inches thick now, depending on the part of the lake. This time last week it was only an inch or two thick, so things are changing quickly, and the 10-day looks good for more ice making. The same report, published by Jeff Sundin via word he got from the floor of the St. Paul Ice Show, suggested that the early walleye bite has been really good on Upper Red. I'll also spend a day with Jeff searching out panfish on some of the smaller lakes in his area of the state and a day on Mille Lacs. Three lakes in three days. Lots of moving and lots of ice fishing fun.

Meanwhile, Back on the Ice

The weatherman says we'll see 70s today, and I can count in my mind at least half a dozen plants in the yard that have flowers. Cold days may still be ahead, but spring is trying hard to happen in Georgia, and I'm thinking more about spring trout fishing than any kind of winter patterns.

That said, I was unable to accept an invitation that would have had me ice-fishing just this week, and I'm reminded that winter and hard-water fishing are still going strong in the north. In fact, my last ice trip of last year was late in March. Jeff Sundin, who I've gotten to ice-fish with twice this winter, posts daily reports about fishing in northern Minnesota. He does a great job of compiling input from a bunch of different fishermen, and I enjoy spending a bit of vicarious time on the ice through his reports.

Making a big jump from Northern Minnesota to Louisiana's Red River, today is "Media Day" at the Bassmaster Classic. The pros are off the water for interviews and receptions and final preparations before the competition begins tomorrow morning. Many of my industry friends will be busy today, either doing as they begin their coverage of the event or preparing booths for the giant sport show that is an important part of the Bassmaster Classic.

Panfish Through the Minnesota Ice

A Lindy Toad proved irresistabe to this big bluegill for Minnesota fishing guide Jeff Sundin.

Because I haven't spent an enormous amount of time ice-fishing, every day on a frozen lake provides new experiences and understanding of the sport's strategies. Most recently, I spent a couple of days in northern Minnesota, learning how to target bluegills, yellow perch and crappie (or crappies, as they say in Minnesota) and gathering photos of the same species.

Beyond the obvious need to downsize baits and gear from what you'd use for walleyes, bass or pike, targeting panfish involves picking the right lake and the right part of the lake. We focused on the edges of deep holes in smaller waters and used a run-and-gun sort of strategy, drilling lots holes and doing quite a bit of searching with flashers. We also looked for suspended fish, which were feeding more actively than fish on the bottom. Our most productive lures included Lindy Toads, Lindy Bugs and Micro Slick Jigs, all matched with plastics, fresh bait or both.

My next hard-water outing will be at Devils Lake in North Dakota, with walleyes and yellow perch as the main attractions.