Solid, but slick, ice fishing

In last week’s fishing column I mentioned my concerns about possible thin or punky ice conditions on Palmer - Wasilla core area lakes — after several days of melting temperatures and snowmelt runoff onto those lakes. Since then temperatures had cooled a bit, before shooting back up on Saturday and Sunday (this past weekend).

3 people had requested that I take them on an ice fishing trip on Sunday, but when I got up that morning it was raining with puddles of water on the parking pad in front of our house. I immediately called my guests and asked how they would like to proceed — as water on top of ice could make very slick fishing conditions — which could also be quite cool depending upon how hard it was raining. We had been talking about the weather forecast and fishing conditions, ahead of time, so they had planned ahead, two of them had purchased ice cleats, and they all had rain gear. Yes! they still wanted to go ice fishing.

Driving out to meet them, I had my windshield wipers running at a steady pace, but they rain had slowed to a drizzle , as we were preparing to walk down to the lake. There was some ice on the trail down to the lake, so I advised walking off to the side for better traction, and simply sitting down if a person did happen to start falling or sliding. Conditions were better than I had imagined and everyone made it down the trail to the lake without incident.

Stepping onto the lake ice, we immediately were stepping into an inch of water on top of the ice. Checking the ice was simple — as it was good and solid, and so clear we could see debris and cracks for over a foot deep in the ice — it was plenty thick. While I had been concerned about ice thickness in core area lakes earlier, a few days of colder temperatures had evidently solidly frozen all of the standing water on top of the ice, resulting in a significant build up in ice thickness /depth.

Out on the lake the wind was blowing / sliding us as we walked across the lake toward an area which had proven to be one of the better spots to catch trout. The two people with ice cleats appeared to be doing quite well, but for myself and the other person with no special traction on our boots, walking was slow going, with our continual effort to be careful / stay upright.

At our destination, I was able to drill the first hole somewhat comfortably — the slickness of water on top of ice can sometimes make it difficult to stay in position as one turns the auger in the ice. Immediately after drilling the first hole, I dropped a line down to test the depth — only about 3 1/2 or 4 feet. With that knowledge, I would move the next holes out another 10 feet, to be closer to the drop off trout migrate along as they swim around the lake. I was looking for 8 - 12 feet of water, but not deeper. Before starting to cut the second hole, I slid three Pautzke’s Balls O’ Fire salmon eggs on the hook / line, used to check the water depth beneath the ice.

Before I had finished drilling the second hole, one of my guests had already pulled a flopping rainbow out of the lake and onto the ice. She wanted to keep the fish, so I removed the hook — without touching the wet nearly ice-cold fish. I’ve learned that getting cold water or fish slime on my gloves is a guarantee for cold hands in a hurry — so I figured out a couple different methods where I can unhook fish without touching or handling them. Usually I simply drop the fish on the ice and gather them up at the end of the trip, however, with a thin layer of water on top of the ice, and windy conditions, the fish was blowing across the ice. So rather than not touching the fish until the end of the trip, we had to pick up each trout, as they were caught, and put them in a bag in my ice fishing sled. I’ve come to accept that ice fishing is often a cooling experience — and on this trip my hands got colder — earlier in the trip than usual.

With colder temperatures, fish often nibble or light-bite during winter fishing trips, compared to warmer summer fishing trips. For this reason I custom-built some light ice fishing rods for better detecting those light bites. Even with my light rods, the bites are still frequently felt as light taps, when the fish gently nugs the bait. Often a fish will bump the bait with its snout a time or two, before taking it fully in its mouth. For this reason, I advise waiting for 3 steady taps before setting the hook. The idea is to wait until the fish fully grabs the bait (so the hook up rate increases), but to also set the hook before the bait and hook are swallowed. Deeply-hooked fish can be seriously injured, to where they may not survive, if released, and often require additional handling to unhook ( wet / slimy hands quickly become cold hands).

Another trick I use to reduce swallowed hooks, by catchable-sized fish, is to upsize my hooks when fishing with bait. I’ve found that a size 2 or 4 hook will still catch plenty of 8 - 14 inch and larger trout, without being swallowed nearly as often as a smaller-sized 6, 8, 10, or 12 hook. Perhaps one of the smaller-sized hooks might be better for catching 6-inch or smaller fish, but when the fish get that small, I often prefer NOT to catch them.

My guests each wanted to harvest a limit of trout to cook and eat, however during our trip, they chose to release some of the shorter or skinnier fish. Fortunately not a single fish swallowed the hook during this trip. The guests did a good job of tracking how many fish they had harvested, and each guest immediately quit fishing after harvesting his / her limit — thereby increasing the remaining guest(s) chances of catching the next fish / harvesting their limit.

It had been drizzling as we started fishing, and while we were fishing water was draining down through the fishing holes the entire time. Once the fish catching started, I forgot all about the light rain, and did not even notice it had stopped raining until the last guest harvested the daily limit. We still had to slip-slide our way back across the water-covered ice and climb the hill, but braving some wind and rain had provided a great ice fishing trip. Driving past several popular Mat-Su Valley ice fishing lakes on my way to and from the lake we fished , I did not see a single angler or fishing shelter on Sunday. I imagine anyone, seeing our group out on the water-covered ice that day, may have wondered about our sanity.

Good Luck and Fish On!