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

TACTIC #4: DOUBLE DIP

One huge advantage during winter is that most jurisdictions allow you to use two rods, so you can fish two different holes with different presentations. That lets you greatly speed up the high-low-fast-slow game plan, but only if you plan your attack carefully.

Typically, I’ll jig in one hole and drill a second hole for my slower presentations. Sometimes, I’ll opt for a long, soft deadstick rod placed across the top of a pail or camp chair so the line, baited with a lively minnow or juicy squirming maggot, goes down the centre of the hole. With the bait providing the drawing power, it’s deadly for walleye, yellow perch, crappies, brookies and rainbows. Other times, I’ll opt for a tip-up with an underwater spool to hang a quick-strike-rigged dead bait for pike or lakers.

On warm days when my holes aren’t quickly freezing over, on the other hand, I’ll almost always use an HT Windlass tip-up (below) to take advantage of the breeze. By gently bending the metal vane on the end, you can catch just the right amount of wind to jig your presentation, varying it from a steady up-and-down rocking-horse motion to a gentle shiver.

I also used one of the new self-jigging JawJacker Jigging Bases a lot last winter, and was mightily impressed. To be honest, I thought the batteries would die quickly in the harsh temperatures of mid-winter, but they stayed charged much longer than I anticipated. That said, I still relied on rechargeable lithium batteries and switched them out during the day.

To cover different parts of the structure I’m fishing over, I typically drill my tip-up hole some distance from where I’m jigging. If I know I’m over top of good fish, however, I’ll place my two holes side-by-side. That way, I can jig an active lure in one hole while I hang a stationary bait right beside it, with my sonar unit in between monitoring both offerings. And when everything goes according to plan, it’s slam-dunk action from start to finish, with the fish either coming in and clobbering the moving lure, or sliding over and sucking in the finesse bait. It’s so much fun.