Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Fishing through the ice.

I could call it ice fishing, but I want to catch fish, not ice.
We touched on augers.
Want to go into all of it?
Tip ups?
Baits?

Everything?

Pictures of past glories?

Devils Lake took 3 days of drilling hundreds of holes finally got into them!!!

my fav ice fishing photo set:

The great thing about ice fishing is that it can be as simple or high tech as you want it to be. I grew up ice fishing nearly every weekend in the winter. We had a crappy Jiffy auger, wooden sticks with a couple screws to wrap line around, an ice scoop, five gallon pail to sit on and that's it. We caught a lot of fish and had a lot of fun.

Now I am able to put a bit more into the sport, so my equipment is better. I run a Strikemaster Mag 2000 auger, Eskimo Quickfish 6i popup tent, HT ice fishing rods and reels, a few Frabil tip ups, Marcum VS485C with Aqua-Vu Mo-Pod 2, and a Mr Heater Buddy heater. I also have a smaller 2 person tent that gets used when it's just me as it's easier to keep warm.

Here's a picture of one day's "keepers" from last winter.



We caught about 4 times that number but released most of them.


SS

ND,

That picture sequence is awesome!

SS

Thanks Sam. You are very right, that's the way we used to do it too. Stick rigs with fixed bobbers, actually our lures haven't changed a whole lot over the years. I stick with some of the classics such as the jem n eye. But wow yeah, we would sit on a bucket in a home made "portable" house, usually made of plywood and tarps. Sometimes a wood fired stove but mostly propane heaters. No electronics (I still don't use them, lol) and I used to take those catch of the day photos like you show above

I have piles of those sorts of photos going way back to our days of fewer kids. This one was probably 5 years ago, I have them going back more than 20 years though, lol!

No one know, but a tough old-timer for sure.

Oh, nice perch nodak

Dave, can you explain the "fixed bobber" technique, please ?

We just use a jig head & live minnow !

No lures either.

What I mean is a non slip bobber. Clip on bobbers that lock onto the line rather than a bobber that allows the line to slip through and uses a "bobber stop" either of the string knot style or the rubber grip bead style.

We also just use jig heads, I guess we use quite a variety but they all are considered jig style hooks. My oldest boy fishes with electronics, uses some flying lures tipped with a minnow head. He does really well with it.

We now use all slip bobbers with short fishing rods that have small spinning reels with drags.

The slip bobber allows the line to be dawn through it and collected on the spinning reel. The "Bobber stop" passes through the rod eyelets no problem and is wound up with the fishing line on the spool.

when you let the line back out, the bobber stop will not pass through the slip bobber, the "stop" grips the fishing line and stops the line at the bobber. The lure is then suspends off the bottom at the depth you choose with the bobber stop.

We typically fish 3 to 12 inches off the bottom for walleye.



The old black and white photo above is how we used to do it. No fishing reel. It's hand line fishing, he's just using the stick to jig the line.

I have no idea what his landing net is for though, lol.

Net wont fit down that hole and it's kind of pointless once you have the fish above the ice.

I use a variety of jigging rods from ultralight to heavy action according to where and for what I'm fishing. I've had good luck with Clam brand rods, specifically the Jason Mitchell series. One thing I have done that I don't see many guys doing is to put baitcast reels on my ice rods. I find that I have less trouble with cold Mono on small levelwind reels than spinning gear. My light rods have tiny bass fishing baitcasters loaded with 8lb line and the big rod I use for Northerns, burbot, and lakers wears a Shimano Calcutta loaded with 20lb. I also use the heavy rig to work my spearing decoy.

I've had popups from Eskimo and still have a 2 man. They've been pretty decent but I've broken some of the poles putting them up when it gets really cold. I just bought a brand new Frabill 2 man this week and plan to try it out on Saturday. Funny story actually, our local sporting goods wholesaler had this one squirreled away in the warehouse and forgot about it. They no longer carry ice fishing gear and found this shelter they've had in inventory for 8 years last week. Their cost was $272 and retail was $479, when the rep offered it to me for $40 I nearly caught my wallet on fire trying to get it out and open!

Started spearing Northerns last year, had a ball with a homemade spear I cooked up. Can't wait to stick some this time around.

I have a battery of Beaver Dam tipups, tried a bunch and don't think these have any equal.
Haul all my gear to the back country lakes with a 1996 Arctic Cat Bearcat 440. It's slow and doesn't ride great, but it's reliable as heck and about as unstickable as a sled can be. Old gal pulls like a bulldozer too. Need to go blow the cobwebs out of her and get ready as I have a date with my first Laker at the end of a trail this winter.

Couple pics from past trips 4ish lb Arctic char.

Rainbow!


Nother fatty rainbow
spearing victim

Hit the ice today for a couple hours until my heater ran out of propane. Caught 18 landlock salmon, 4 blackfish, 2 small rainbows, and 2 char one of which was pretty nice probably 2.5 lbs. Also had 2 muskrats come up through the hole into the popup with me, talk about a surprise!

Where you be fishen at there KID. Just curios and jealous.Going to be awhile for me.

I'm in Alaska. We didn't have safe ice early again this year due to a warm fall. But the 10 days preceding this weekend had temps in the single digits during the day and zero or below at night. That coupled with little to no snow cover let us build 6"-8" of clear hard ice pretty fast.

We got enough snow over the last 3 or so days to make running a SnoGo an option so I'm hoping to get out to a more remote lake thats chock full of Northerns to do some spearing here pretty soon.

Cool Alaska ice fishing.I think i would like to try that someday.

When those fillets are fried up over a fire in that cold air, and enjoyed ever so fresh---!

Thanks Dave,

Going to have to give the bobbers a try this winter.

Does it work in "the open", or only in the heated enclosures ?

Typically, we sit in a heated ice hut, eating & drinking & the holes are drilled outside in an appropriate sized area for the amount of fisherpersons. Once somebody sees a flag drop, or rod go down, then it's much like a football game to see who can get there first.

Any pictures of lake trout?