Archive for January, 2010

Because that’s the only way any of us will be getting any Steelhead for the foreseeable future. My philosophy of “use every method possible to catch fish” gets literal when I break out an auger and start drilling holes in the ice, popping the underwater camera down, and jig fish through the ice with a 27″ ice rod.

We should see some safe ice to do this again this week but if you go on your own be extremely careful. Ice over moving water is always a huge question mark. If you are interested in doing an ice trip for Steelhead give me a call and I’ll be happy to take you out.

Most baits used in open water will work for Steel under the ice and using a float, but I prefer to use my shorter jigs to get bit quickly. Often they hit them with enough force that they set the hook themselves. With just a few feet of line out and keeping a continuous jigging rhythm, if you feel anything out of the ordinary, it’s a fish that just inhaled the jig. If you keep the hole clear of slush you can often see the strike. Most often however they hit jigs hard and the fish is running and stripping line by the time you’re heart slows down.

I don’t think my Grandfather, a Pacific Northwest salmon and steelheader most of his life, would have ever believed that one could ice fish for Steelhead. Fortunately this is just another benifit of the Erie fishery. One of the true 365 day a year fisheries, whatever the texture of the water is.

Old man winter is bringing his A game this year and he’s bringing it for 4 quarters and 2 overtimes. I’m always prepared for the matchup. -JB

The warm temps and rain from last weekend opened up the streams and left a short window of oppurtunity for open water fishing. The tribs became fishable late Tuesday and yesterday. By Wednesday morning heavy slush and ice were already returning and making fishing difficult. With Friday’s forecasted temps in the teens you can bet the streams will be near unfishable by Saturday.

Fished a large hole first thing and hooked and landed a nice female on the first cast using a jig. Thought this would be the start of a good day but the hole quickly became filled with slush and a 15 ft wide patch of skim ice circling the hole made it even tougher. An attempt was made to float fish but that became difficult with the conditions. Fished a larger trib for the next 4-5 hours and caught a couple of nice fish and missed a few. With slush still coming down the stream we float fished eggs and flies, at times using heavy shot to beat the slush and get down.

After a melt like this that involved streams locked up with ice you really never know what to expect in terms of fish numbers and where they are located. If they survived the ice jams (which can act as a meat grinder of sorts) and the initial freeze up (when I ice fished larger holes many fish were seen on Aqua Vu camera frozen to the ice on the surface) they may be in entirely different areas and you may not see the packs of fish that were in the same holes prior to ice up. Finding where fish are holding is more important than what you are using when you can’t see fish in green water.

In the coldest of waters fish that are in swifter stretches of the stream will avoid the fastest water which usually is on one side of the stream against banks. Generally they will come off the banks and stay in the seam where the fast water meets the slower water. Remember in the fall when you fished against banks to fish that were moving? Bring your drift about 3-4 feet off those same banks and that should be the line the fish will hold on.

Doing this produced a few more nice fish and a couple of lost fish as well. Headed back to the large hole from earlier in the morning and much of the slush had burned off, but the hole was fairly stained up. In a large hole you may find many different types of drifts. The water coming in at the head of the hole provides one, the seam it creates is another, the whirlpooling effect, sometimes 2 or 3 of them, another. The reverse drift in front of you is another option. And when fish are not stacked up like they were in the fall and you can’t see them, you need to figure out where they are grouped up, and even what direction they are facing. This can be a difficult task, especially when trying to drift every possible option with bait or flies. This is where a jig can become a “search lure” and help you find the fish faster. Once you hook a few on jigs you know that if you need to switch to a float setup you can, as you will have a lot more knowledge about what drift to fish and when to expect a strike. Obviously with a stained up hole jigging won’t do much good, but if it’s any color of green bling jigging is a good way to start.

It certainly was refreshing to have a long rod in hand and open water flowing on the waders, but it looks as if it’s short lived. Fish were put on the bank but winter is limiting our chances to go out and search more water to find the heaviest concentrations of fish post thaw. If I could hit 20 holes/stretches of stream in a day I would. Till then it’s a good thing I left all of my ice fishing gear together in a corner of the garage. -JB

Cold temps are on their way back later this week. Streams should fish by Wednesday but it may only be for a few days before we see significant ice build up again. I have days available this week to fish. If you’d like to fish give me a call and we can get out! Looking forward to being back on open water. -JB