Chill Challenge Embraced

December fishing on the Nantahala River. Photo by Asher Samsel.

Duluth Trading Company proposed a Chill Challenge -- a test of one of their Flannel Shirt Jacs against the elements during my winter fishing excursion. Two rounds into testing, the Shirt Jac has moved to the top of my favorites list for when I need a seriously warm layer that fits comfortably. Beyond casual coat wear on cold mornings around town, which it also works well for, I've used it for a few days of trout fishing in the North Carolina mountains and for a recent ice trip to northern Minnesota.

The trout outing brought snow and sleet on two different days, and pretty cold brisk lows. My hands reminded me of the cold when I fished without gloves, but I was how impressed by how warm my body remained. Same story in Minnesota, where lows hit close to zero and the highest high in a few days was somewhere around freezing. I admittedly wore an insulated ice suit for kneeling on the ice and fishing in fresh falling snow, but the Shirt Jac provided the most important body-warming layer.

The DTC Flannel Shirt Jac seems somewhat heavy when you simply pick it up because it combines 8-ounce flannel as an outside layer and 200 gram fleece as an inside layer. The cut must be perfect, though, because it is amazingly comfortable to wear despite the weight in hand.

Of course, the Chill Challenge has only just begun for me. Existing winter plans include trout in Missouri and more ice-fishing in Minnesota and most likely will include several days in local trout streams and on nearby ponds, plus some other ice fishing, possibly in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and/or South Dakota.

Lots of unknowns about fishing plans for the rest of the winter. What I do know is that I'll remain plenty warm!

Good Night Walleyes

Home for tonight has holes in the floor. In fact it's where I've caught walleyes throughout the day today, in one of Red Lake Remote's sleeper fish houses.

It was tempting to just keep fishing, but tiredness won, so now I'm in a bunk, amazingly comfortable, considering that it is somewhere around zero just outside the fish house. it's my first night ever on the ice and I suspect I'll sleep very well, maybe even dreaming about walleyes.

Travel Ready

Well. The first leg went smoothly. Ninety-six miles from home to ATL, plus parking, check-in and security, and as of now flight number one appears to be ontime. I'd never flown with a fishfinder, and that was seamless in security.

In an hour or so I fly to MSP. Third leg is from Minneapolis to the Bemidji, Minn. regional airport, and then I drive another 45 minutes or so.

Travel is a bit of a task, but I do like traveling to Minnesota. I was born there, so maybe it's in my blood, but admit to being somewhat of a Northwoodsman wannabe. I can't travel north during the winter without at least starting the Viking beard and sporting the Duluth Trading Company plaid flannel.

Obviously I like the fishing itself in Minnesota. It goes well beyond that, though. I like the whole fishing culture that saturates northern Minnesota. If seems like most people there fish some, and even if they don't, they can talk fishing,.and they seem to appreciate the traveling anglers who feed the economy.

I also like cool little bait shops, woodland lakes, snow and ice.

I even like the cold, but I suppose that's easier to say when you can get on a plane and return to Georgia at the end of the week!

Ice: Love It or Hate It

Like most things, fishing has it's subgroups, and many anglers I spend time with are very specialized in their interests. Some dedicated bass fishermen would just as well go grocery shopping as wade a trout stream, and the same concept applies equally in the other direction. Others, like me, enjoy a little bit of everything, while still others fall somewhere in-between.

For all the preferences of species and fishing styles that can exist, though, I don't think anything polarizes fishermen quite like ice fishing. I'd say more dedicated anglers than not want nothing to do with walking on ice in 8-degree weather and trying to pull fish through little holes. I hear that perspective a lot, especially from fisherman friends from this part of the country, when I talk about my ice fishing plans.

Those folks who like ice fishing tend to love ice fishing. Few fishermen I've met just like it OK. Even in the heart of ice country, there are basically two camps. Either you quit fishing or venture south when the lakes freeze or you spend as many days as possible ice fishing while the opportunity exists.

If you glance at this blog even occasionally, you know I fall in the "love ice fishing" school. I'm Minnesota bound on Monday and am more than a little eager to get back on the ice!

Daydreams About Ice Things

Yeah. I'm bitten. And if your follow this blog at all, you probably know it. The fact is that I like ice fishing WAY too much for someone who lives in Georgia. I watch reports from northern friends with undeniable envy and do a lot of dreaming and scheming of ice travels. Fortunately, I sell a lot of ice stories and photos to various magazines and websites, so traveling well to the north two or three times every winter makes good business sense to me, along with being big fun.

If you have facebook friends who live in the ice belt, you likely know it. If you live there you know it all too well. Winter is coming on quickly this year, and with Thanksgiving not even yet passed, quite a few fishermen have already been out on the ice. And I'm not even talking about eager beavers who tiptoe where they probably ought not tread. Quite a few places now have several inches of really good ice, and conditions are getting better every day.

My first ice trip of this winter remains a few weeks away, but it's solidly planned, so I have something to count down toward. I have a little extra anticipation about this one because we'll be spending a couple of nights in a sleeper house, out on the lake, which is something I haven't done before. Why I'm excited about sleeping in a hut on the ice, I can't tell you exactly. But I am.

Because it's always most practical for me to fly to ice trips and because it only makes sense to go a few times each winter, I've not begun gathering any of the bigger equipment I'd likely have if I lived in the North. I have ice rods, good clothes for most conditions and plenty of ice lures. I don't have my own hut, auger or ice electronics. I sometimes think about an ice tour road trip, which would involve gathering that stuff for myself, but so far, I've not done more than thinking about such a plan, and a this point, the time, gas, miles between me and most ice fishing destinations, and a lack of knowledge are bigger prohibitives than the equipment.

For now, I'll have to stick with vicarious ice fishing through friends on facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Soon I'll be back out there, though! Very soon.

Gear: Vexilar Sonarphone Looks Seriously Cool

The days leading up to ICAST can be almost as fun as the show itself as companies begin previewing the cool stuff they will release. No exception today. That's for sure! Just this morning, Vexilar leaked word about the coolest new release I've heard about yet.

The  Vexilar Sonarphone makes your smartphone or tablet into a high-definition sonar unit using a dedicated WiFi signal that goes from a little transducer box, which is the only thing you have to buy, to a free phone app. No corresponding graph needed. The phone becomes the graph, and the part you buy in it's simplest form is only $129.95. I haven't seen the real thing yet (next week!), but it sounds like they've though through practicalities of mounting, having your phone out in the weather, etc., and word is that the imagery and capabilities are really good. It even comes with a neoprene wristband for your phone to provide an option for keeping it handy. Some mounting/protection options are extra, but even the deluxe package is less than $200.

The Sonarphone especially intrigues me because of the way I fish. I travel all over and I mostly fish out of the backs of other people's boats, from docks, from canoes and johnboat boats, from atop the ice... Assuming the transducer unit is pretty portable and easy to place in various settings, it seems like the ideal thing to use on the ponds near home and then tote virtually anywhere I travel. I always borrow other people's units for ice-fishing because I live in Georgia and fly to everywhere I fish through the ice, which makes the idea of toting my own traditional sonar unit more than a little impractical.

I do have a few nuts-and-bolts questions, like how it impacts the already-short battery life of a typical smartphone if you use the graph much in a place where you don't have the capacity to re-charge. The Vexilar folks have most likely thought about the same things, though, and probably will have answers to most of my questions. I'll probably do another blog about the Sonarphone after I've seen the real thing, but this innovation definitely caught my attention this morning and I wanted to pass along word.

Why Wait for Ice?

The new MarCum LX-9 combines digital sonar, high-definition underwater video and DVR functionality in one portable unit.

One inevitable effect of ICAST and all the reports that come from the world's largest sportfishing trade show is a surge of anticipation in the fishing world. Anglers everywhere read stories and watch reports, but most of the best stuff hasn't hit full production, and some may not be available for several months. And so we anticipate.

The waiting is even worse when it's stuff made for ice-fishing. No matter how quickly the manufacturers get production up to speed and make their products available, it's tough to ice-fish without ice. You can jiggle a new rod, hold jig between your fingers or even set up a shelter in your yard, but somehow it's not the same as really putting it to work on the hard water.

Such is the case this year. One of the coolest product introductions I'm aware of from this year's show, the MarCum LX-9, was designed primarily for ice fishing, so my guess is that some Minnesota lake will have to freeze before I'll actually get to see one in action. This portable unit combines digital sonar readings and high-definition camera, visible together on a split screen, and adds DVR recording capabilities. Talk about getting a seriously good picture of what's below you as you fish and being able to truly study the fish's behavior!

The more I think about these units and all their functions, though, the more I wonder why they should be only for ice. I realize most boating anglers rely upon in-dash units, and my guess is that changing bottom depths and a moving boat could create some challenges for the depth setting of the camera. Still, so much boat fishing is from a stationary position, with a lure or bait dropped straight down from the rod tip. It would seem like an LX-9 would be be immeasurably valuable to a drop-shotter working a school of suspended bass or a crappie fisherman jigging spoons beside a bridge piling. Or what about a scouting angler who is slowing going over a hole and is trying to figure out of he's seeing stripers, catfish or something else on his electronics?

What about dock fishermen, small-boat anglers or even back-of-the boat fishermen? Serious ice fishermen all carry their own electronics from hole to hole on every lake they visit. It seems to me like we might be "missing the boat" in the open-water world, and that the LX-9 is too seriously cool to only use when it's seriously cold.

Ice Gear in Orlando?

Folks don't set up ice-fishing shelters in Florida during January, let alone July, but the shelters will be going up tomorrow. At the same time everything from ice lures to augers will being coming out of their packaging. Orlando is the host city of the International Convention of Allied Sport Fishing Trades (ICAST), and all segments of the sportfishing industry -- including ice-fishing -- will be represented at the show.

One new name in the ice world at this year's ICAST show will be Ice Force, which is not a new brand but instead a new marketing alliance of several classic ice brands. Otter, Strike Master, Mora Ice, MarCum, Rapala, VMC and Sufix together make up Ice Force. Collectively, these brands offer ice-fishing shelters, augers, electronics, lures, hooks, line and more.

You can bet these brands will break out some new stuff that will have northern anglers seriously longing for colder days. One I've heard about is an ice-specific version of Sufix 832, a high-performance superline.

Set-up for the three-day show begins tomorrow. ICAST activities begin with a New Products Showcase preview reception Tuesday night. The show runs Wednesday through Friday, so look for lots of buzz about new fishing stuff.