With snow falling and irrepressible thoughts of spring I’m reminded that there is still
some winter related fun to be had.  It might be as simple as a walk through a WMA with the dog but busting through a crusty snow surface often makes for a more difficult time so maybe that can wait a couple weeks yet.  It’s a bit early too for turkey scouting and still too white ta chase snows so my suggestion – there’s about 3’ of solid ice and fish are starting to think
spring too.

After Saturday Fan Outdoors last week a friend and I headed to a favorite lake.  The thought was to get away from the crowd looking for some “new” fish.  Alone, at least no evidence of past holes or tracks visible we punched a half dozen using the new K-drill.  While drilling the only noise audible was the blades cutting ice.  I’ve never realized how pleasant that silence can be especially adding to the open hole inventory by simply picking up the drill and squeezing the trigger to start.  Dropping the Ice 55 ducer into the liquid ice showed a mere 4.6 foot of water under the ice.  With 6 gal buckets for stools we cleaned the holes, packed eurolarva on the hooks before dropping them into the shallow water.  Some biters seemed to live under each hole with a few making the 8” keeper mark but the bite was sporadic that
was until mid-afternoon under a warm blue sunny sky.   Earlier we both noticed the bright red lines right under the ice in most of the holes. Moving the jigs up just under the transducer gave away the bite.  Immediately red lines moved up to the bait. 

Sometimes showing up midway in the shallow water column other times from the bottom coming up.  It really made no difference because they bit.  Much like cane pole days from a
long time agp it was easier to simply raise an arm than reel with less than 4 foot of line out.  I’m sure sight fishing would have been fun but it would have required the portable set up to effectively see in the bright sunlight.

Thinking back on the day the type of bite is not at all unusual for spring fish under
ice but it was unfortunate the time it took to figure it out.  In those last couple hours we probably caught 50 or so fish actually leaving biting fish behind as we left and the sun
settled into the horizon.

So as you head out next time and notice the red lines right under the ice don’t wait,
catch ‘em!  The late winter early spring bite is on, well as least last Saturday it was. 
Funny how sometimes the fish don’t read all the articles written about them!

Good luck
and Have Fun!

Capt’n