We headed north over the New Year’s holiday to visit some friends who live in Bemidji, MN. Since it’s a multi-hour driving trip, we decided to fly. Sean had just invested in some ice fishing gear for this winter, but our ice is still relatively thin here in Madison. Bemidji’s ice, on the other hand, was just fine – a good 10 inches on Grace Lake, a smaller lake near our friends’ home. We were able to give a lot of our gear to Tyler (another Wisconsin friend who was driving to Bemidji that same weekend) so we didn’t have to pack up all the ice fishing stuff for the plane.
We’ve fished on Grace Lake before during the summer and fall, and it’s a nice little lake with a lot of bass, northern pike, and perch. I had only caught northern and largemouth on it before, and Sean had caught some rock bass. Tyler’s our serious fishing hobbyist friend who specializes in muskie fishing, and he has had good luck on many occasions at Grace Lake catching many different species. At the bait store, Tyler and Sean asked about spots where there had been good fishing of late, and thus Grace was chosen. Tyler gave Sean the perfect Christmas gift for a budding ice angler: a collapsible ice auger of his very own.
I must admit that I have never ice fished before this, and I was pretty skeptical about how much fun it was going to be. I don’t love being cold, and while I do like fishing I like being able to go do something else for a while. So, we packed up a sled (generously supplied by Tyler) as well as our new ice fishing gear and stepped out onto Grace Lake. It was a relatively warm day for a Bemidji winter – about 19F and sunny, with a consistent but not super strong breeze. Sean had purchased an Eskimo 5-sided ice fishing shelter at a steep discount for the occasion, which is insulated and very roomy. It ended up being fairly warm in there from just our body heat, and Sean had purchased a propane heater that we fired up once for a minute or two to provide additional warmth.
We chose a spot not too far away from the landing, estimating about 8 feet of lake depth. There were several ice huts already set up not too far from shore (100 yards or so? I’m terrible at eyeballing distances!) We set to work with drilling a couple of holes in the corners of our shelter (not as hard as I thought it would be), and discovered that the ice was about 10 inches. Tyler left me with his panfish rod and reel, baited with a waxworm, and then he and Sean went out of the shelter to drill a couple of holes for tip-ups. While they were doing that, I got a bite! I couldn’t believe it. Sean and Tyler hurried back (I admit, I was sort of surprised-yelling) just in time to see me haul a small perch out of the hole. After that, it was on. We pulled dozens of perch out of our ice holes, with about 20-25 keepers. The waxworms seemed to be very popular with the local perch population. The water was so clear that you could peer down the hole and see the waxworm on the bottom of the lake. The perch seemed to like small, gentle pick-up jigging action with several seconds in between, but there were times that they were biting pretty reliably on every waxworm.
The tip-ups were having trouble – they were baited with minnows that kept disappearing without tripping the tip-up. Tyler and Sean really wanted to get a northern on the tip-ups, but our theory is that it’s possible that the hungry perch were stealing the minnows.
We packed it in after a few hours, and Sean spent a long time the next day cleaning all of our catch. We fried up about half of it that day, and it was delicious! I’m pretty thrilled that our first ice fishing expedition turned out to be such a good haul – it’s more perch than I have ever caught, and I hope it bodes well for a good fishing year in 2017!
Tippy Canoe Tales 