Ice-fishing Friday: 7 expert tactics for catching fish on busy, pressured lakes

TACTIC #3: MIX IT UP

When fishing with friends, my power pattern mantra for years now—both in winter and summer—has been, “One high, one low, one fast, one slow.” If you’re fishing for lakers, rainbows or brookies, for instance, don’t start the day with everyone using the same presentation, even if it worked well the day before. Instead, have everyone try something different to start. One angler could snap and flutter a spoon five feet under the ice for the husky high fliers, for instance, while another mopes a fluke-style soft-plastic close to the bottom. And a third angler could pop a tube jig in the middle of the water column, while yet another slows things right down. That way, you can rotate through all your favourite lures until the presentation part of the pattern emerges. Then you can all fish the same bait.

Even when I am ice fishing solo, I employ this strategy religiously, which is why I always have at least four ice rods rigged and ready with different presentations to drop down the hole. I’ll typically give each one a five-minute workout before moving over to another hole and repeating the process until I find what works.

BONUS TIP: SUPER SPOONS

During winter, you’ll often find the fish wanting a small, fluttering spoon that falls quickly. The problem is, those are two typically opposing characteristics in spoons. My solution is to take two identical spoons, remove the hooks and O-rings, then sandwich them together and reattach the O-rings and one hook, essentially doubling the weight of the presentation. For this, I like to use two one-inch, 1/16th-ounce W10 Williams Wablers.