Ice Fishing Fundamentals

Ice Fishing Fundamentals

By Rod Woten

Every year I give lots of ice fishing seminars over the course of the winter. LOTS of seminars. So many in fact, that I used to find myself wanting to up the ante with each seminar I presented, tackling increasingly more complex subject matter with each new presentation. A few years ago, however, I came to the realization that most of my best seminars, the ones where I could really feel that the crowd was engaged and really wanted to hear what I was going to say next, were the ones where I covered the basics or seminars where I presented key concepts for becoming a good ice angler.

Regardless whether I had an audience of seasoned veterans, eager new ice anglers or those aspiring to become ice anglers, my audiences really like when I get down to the fundamentals. It makes sense when you think about the new or aspiring ice anglers because they want to learn how to ice fish and are starting out at square one. It seems that the seasoned veterans like to be reminded of the fundamentals as well….especially after a long open water season when some of our ice fishing skills can get a little rusty. I even find myself buckling down and revisiting those fundamentals when I’m having a rough patch of fishing in the winter. It happens to all of us, and often it’s because we’re forgetting those fundamentals. In that spirit, here are some of the key elements that always seem to improve my fishing whenever I take the time to brush up on them.

Mobility
Mobility is the most important element to successful ice fishing as far as I’m concerned. Mobility is pretty easy during open water, so that’s why you don’t often hear people preaching about mobility during those months. Adding a layer of ice to the lakes however, makes mobility that much harder because you have to drill a hole anytime you want to “cast”. Just like during open water however, the more casts you can make through the ice, the better your odds of finding fish. I’m always amazed at the ice anglers I encounter that complain about how bad the bite is or how scarce the fish are, that will continue to sit in those unproductive spots all day. It never even occurs to them that maybe they should move to try and find some active fish. One poignant example of this comes to mind. Back in the day, when I ran the Iowa division of Team Extreme Ice Fishing Tournaments, I would often visit the lake on Saturday when a majority of the teams are pre-fishing for the tournament on Sunday. It was during one of these visits that I was sitting at the boat ramp listening to ice anglers as they were coming off the ice. Some of the things I kept hearing them say were, “dead sea”, “no fish in this lake” “this lake is a total waste of time”. I had to chuckle under my breath because I had just been out checking the buckets of the tournament anglers to get a feel for what kind of a weigh-in I could expect and was very pleased with the selection of large bluegills and crappies they were catching. The big difference is that the teams fishing the tournament had embraced the philosophy of mobility. It’s hard to be competitive in any ice fishing tournament without it. The anglers that were coming off of the ice had walked out, drilled a hole in the “community spot” without even verifying if there were fish there. They may have moved to a couple of different holes before they threw in the towel, whereas the tournament anglers were drilling holes, checking for fish and not stopping until they found them. The moral of the story is that if you aren’t seeing fish, it’s time to move!

A Balanced Approach
It’s also very important to maintain a balance between your jig, line, rod and reel. It’s important that your line hangs taut under the weight of the jig. If there are coils in your line when the jig is tied on, then your line is either too heavy or too old and needs replaced. A taut line transmits, both visually and by feel, everything that is going on underwater. Coils in your line insulate your hand and eyes to these signals and will make you miss most strikes. A taut line also yields a much quicker hookset because you are actually setting the hook rather than straightening all the coils out between your rod tip and jig.

The rod then must be balanced to the line and jig. If the rod is too stiff, you will also miss hooksets as you will be ripping the jig from the mouth of the fish. You will also have break-offs, because there is not enough give in the rod tip to cushion a fighting fish and absorb any runs the fish might make. A rod that is too soft will also result in missed hooksets because all of the energy of the hookset goes into bending the rod tip instead of driving the hook home. The same rod will also result in lost fish because there will not be enough backbone to bring fish up. Because you will gain ground on the caught fish so slowly, it is on the hook long enough that chances are greatly increased that it will throw the hook.

To complete the setup, the reel must be balanced to everything else. It must have a drag sensitive enough to prevent the line from breaking when a fish fights. It must also have an appropriately sized spool to store the right amount of the correct size line without forming coils. Lastly the weight of the reel must balance with the rest of the setup. A reel that is too heavy will kill any sensitivity the combo may have had and wears arms out after a long day of jigging.

Give The Fish What They Want
With all the electronics used on the ice nowadays, there should be no reason to not be able to dial in a presentation. Whether you’re using a flasher, a graph or a camera, they all make it very easy to discern what things are triggering the fish and what things are shutting them down. Through your electronics, the fish will tell the angler exactly what they want; we just have to be willing to listen. Did the fish flat-out refuse your presentation, or did it make a half-hearted attempt before moving on? Did it strike only to grab the tail and recoil when you set the hook? These are all things your electronics and the feel of the rod in your hand can tell you. Any one of these instantly has me changing things in my presentation in an attempt to find something more to their liking. Simply put, if the fish are refusing what you are offering then change something! Dropping down the same exact offering will only result in the same type of refusals. Sometimes it’s as simple as a change in jigging cadence; should you try hard and fast or a more subtle jiggling motion? Sometimes it’s a simple matter of color; start changing colors until you land on one that changes the response you’re seeing. Do you need to upsize or downsize? These are just a few of the elements about your presentation that you can change. The important thing is that you start changing something about your presentation instead of continuing with the presentation that is yielding only negative responses.

Keep your Bait Fresh
For some reason it’s a no-brainer during open water to change out your minnow for a livelier one when the bite slows down. This fresh bait puts fresh scent, oils and vibrations into the water to entice fish to bite. Oddly enough, many ice anglers forget this concept once the lakes freeze up. You’d be amazed at the number of anglers I run across complaining that they’re seeing the fish but not getting any bite. More often than not, when I have them reel up, I find the same wax worms, euro-larvae or minnow head on their hook that was there an hour ago. It’s obvious that any scent that was in that bait is long gone, not to mention any movement. These same anglers are often amazed that the same fish they’ve worked for the past 30 minutes, instantly turns into a biter as soon as fresh bait is dropped down. Often times you will lose bait as you fish, so that is the perfect time to add a fresh larvae or wax worm to your jig. If you’re anything like me, I always end up disposing of unused bait at the end of the season, so there’s no excuse not to rebait you jig early and often.

Fish The Golden Hours
I have to shake my head every time I’m out on the ice and I see anglers leaving at 3:30 in the afternoon or just getting to the lake at 10 in the morning. Sure, I understand that people have obligations; kids to pick up, errands to run, groceries to buy and parties to attend. I think many times, however, it’s just a matter of picking the wrong times to fish. Instead of targeting that 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. time window, they should focus on those three to four hours on each side of sunrise to sunset. If I only have a short time to fish on any given day, I will try to fit it into those windows. Those windows are often referred to as the “golden hours” and they can make even the worst ice angler look like a pro! During these time periods the light is transitioning, dark to light in the morning and light to dark in the evening. The change in ambient light gets all the microscopies in the lake active and feeding. This in turn gets the baitfish and panfish into a feeding frenzy which then in turn fires up the predator and game fish. With all the fish in any given system feeding so heavily during these “windows of opportunity”, it’s definitely your best bet at getting on some fish and sometimes it can be non-stop, hand-over-fist, fish-catching action. Can you still pick up fish during the middle of the day? Sure you can, but you often have to really work for those fish. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t fish at other times of the day, but you should at least try to include that morning bite or that evening bite on one side or the other of your mid-day fishing.

These are some of fundamentals that I see most often forgotten on the ice. Whenever I come across a fellow ice angler that is struggling or even if I am struggling myself, I find it is because I let one or more of these fundamentals slip. Any ice angler, whether a seasoned veteran or a rookie, can benefit from re-visiting and brushing up on the fundamentals from time to time. Hopefully you can find one or two that you have been letting slide and you can put the work into to make this ice season one of your best ever.