I have a frequent debate with my friends on the water regarding when is the best time to fish. Some of them state moon cycles, weather systems or time of the year. My contention is that if I did not catch fish that day it was my fault as I did not figure out what they wanted. Granted some of those aforementioned conditions may play a small factor in a lack of success or having a day to remember. I just do not want to place success or failure on things I cannot control, with the exception of things like floods. Regardless of which side you fall on I only have one thought and that is to go whenever you can. A wise man once said “there are only two great times to fish and those are when it is raining and when it is not.” I could not agree more even if I am the one that probably said it in my group of friends.
Fog rolling in
Nice rainbow trout!
One of my first times on the ice this year was the early part of January. There had been many anglers in our state that were brave, if that is what you want to call it, that were on the water in mid-December. No fish is important enough to me to end up going through the ice. It was bad enough a few years ago when I went into the water right after ice out, so I can only imagine the feeling of going through the ice. On this day I was only planning on setting up the stoves and cooking some bacon and grilled cheese sandwiches with hot soup. There were going to be five of us and potentially more joining later in the day, so I was content with feeding friends and enjoying the day. Nothing hits the spot more than having a belly full of warm food while chasing flags. Or in the case of Chi drilling close to a hundred holes and jigging constantly around the pond. We usually give him a hard time about doing this in jest, but mostly we like the idea of being able to move around using these holes and already having the work done for us.
Even with the rain coming it still was pretty
Chi caught and landed a bunch of these while jigging
After we had completely set up things were pretty slow. Sometimes with ice fishing it is a waiting game and you need to let your bait soak. If you notice that one area is getting more action you can move, but it is a gamble as the fish move around and you could be pulling your traps from willing fish. This was the case with one cove getting a few flags, so I moved a couple of my own traps into this cove to test my luck. The cove itself was no more than eight feet deep. In the middle of batches of grilled cheese sandwiches one of my traps in the cove went off. As I ran to check it out I noticed that the line was tight and off to the side, but the fish was not taking any line. As I picked up the trap the line went crazy and was shaking violently. I set the hook and I felt tremendous weight. As I was fighting this fish the others were coming over and yelled if it was a fish. My lack of response was a little telling. I was still not sure what it was and as I got the fish close to the bottom of the hole I noticed a red cheek, indicating that it was a rainbow trout, but the size was concerning as I hoped the hole was big enough for it to fit through. After a few attempts to not snap the line and get the head moving the right way up the hole I quickly slid the heaviest fish I had ever caught in the state onto the ice. This was a very dark rainbow trout that taped out at 26 inches and was very thick. We did not think to get a girth measurement that would have given us a more accurate weight. The wonderful thing about this fish was that the release was incredibly clean. The hook was right on the top of its jaw and it did not flop around on the ice hurting itself so when everyone asked what I was going to do with it I just smiled and returned it to the pond for someone else to catch. Afterwards I noticed that my trap arbor had seized not letting this huge trout take any line. I was indeed lucky that my line did not snap due to this.
Cold snowy start to the day
I did get the first fish of this day
Back to the discussion of when to fish there is also the thought of where and if a pond or lake has received too much pressure. You should just go and see for yourself. I fish some very heavily fished water and we do just fine. The last trip was a case in point. This particular pond gets pounded and is one of the first ponds to freeze over in the winter so the pressure is early and often. Chi and I decided that with a snow storm coming in and conditions getting worse we would give it a shot even though they just had an event there and supposedly the pond had been fished out. It was cold and snow was falling quickly so we got the holes drilled and the shelter set up to get out of the elements. For those of you who know me I do not like jigging and would rather set traps. Today I decided to give it a more concerted effort as Chi really does well with this and it never hurts to learn from those that do things better. We had a few flags early, but nothing to write home about, so we continued to try different holes and other parts of the pond. When we got into a spot that was around 6 feet deep and not far from shore we finally put it together. After Chi pulled three trout in a row from one hole we knew we were on them. We really confirmed that when we drilled another hole in the same area and had a trout on as Chi was lowering his jig into the hole. That usually does not happen like that.
Chi with another solid fish
Even though I did not jig up as many I did hold my own
Now the idea of jigging sounds like it would appeal to me as I like to move around when open water fishing. I think by only using a hand auger for so long I just drilled enough holes for what I needed and made it work. The thought of constantly moving or drilling more holes with a hand auger did not appeal much to me at the time. If the one hole I drilled to jig in did not pan out I would just put another trap in it. Having different options and moving often seems to make more sense and will be something that I will figure out to add to the repertoire. The other thing that makes jigging fun with Chi is that he has a camera that he drops down into the hole to watch the action. The highlight of the day, other than the stupid amount of brook trout we caught, was putting the camera down the hole and actually watching a trout take my jig. Unfortunately the camera does not record as that would have been really cool. Most of the trout took the jig right on the bottom, but as that bite slowed down we jigged right under the ice and we would watch as our jigs would be slashed at in front of our eyes and most times they connected and we were on again. Now the moral of the story here is if we were not jigging and moving around we would have only had moderate success on our traps. Also the temperatures were dropping and the wind chill was in the single digits and if we were not catching fish we would have left hours before. There was only one other angler on the pond with us and he did not get any action at all while we were there and we had a banner day fishing. This is why I do not try and put too much credit on fishing reports as most times I want to find out first hand. So, as a wise man once said “just go fishing already.”