Admittedly I do have the gear to get out and go ice fishing, I have good boots, good clothing, shelters and heaters, it can be done. What I do not have is something that cannot be purchased...friends (other than my lovely bride of course). Friends or at least fishing buddies are important in weather like this, too many things can go wrong out there to not have a second truck or at least someone close enough to come provide assistance if something goes wrong out there.
When I first was introduced and taught the basic skills of ice fishing it was by my friend Doug in Kingston, we never ice fished NB in the meagre two years in NB, we had lots to do and family to do it with but had we stayed longer that family would have been introduced to the sport as well.
When we arrived in Manitoba we found the cold comes early so by Christmas the first year we were looking for ice, things have changed a lot since that initial trip...we arrived at Whitefish Lake on sunny cold (likely -12 C range) day with the following gear -
- a six inch hand auger
- 2 or 3 basic icefishing rods
- a plastic scoop for cleaning holes
- a few small jigs like we used to use for fishing perch in ON.
That honestly was all we had, and other than a couple of better quality rods all one needs to get started in Southern ON or points East. We quickly learned that was not going to get us very far here in MB unless you really enjoy working really hard to get now where fast....a hand auger will not even get through the ice by the time winter is over for the most part, our hand auger is limited to 48 inches...last winter we were drilling closer to 60 inches than 48 inches. And really do you think drilling several holes through more than 4 feet of ice in cold weather by hand is a good way to go enjoy a relaxing day, well have fun with that...
We were as nervous as anyone could imagine, never having driven on ice before when we first arrived at this lake...it is about a 9 km drive from where you access the ice to where you fish on this lake...we chickened out, quickly realizing we did not have the requisite knowledge to take this risk. We followed the tracks onto the ice for all of 50 yards before pulling over and deciding this was enough.
There was another truck pulled over close by so we figured this would be a great place to start our ice fishing adventure..well sort of right but mostly wrong. Anyway we jumped out and grabbed our hand auger and I went to drill some holes, I was drilling and drilling and drilling...well you get the idea. About 24" of ice and hard...the gentleman from the nearby truck came over with his auger and said he would be happy to drill us some holes, the difference was his auger was gas powered, 8" holes were soon appearing in the ice like magic...awe inspiring, jaw dropping and envy inducing...Andrea quickly voiced we have to have one of those, she knowing the strain hand auguring holes placed on my neck and shoulder was all over that idea.
We promptly started shopping, that meant researching and I found a couple of good resources to guide us in our ice fishing journey..we learned that if we were going to chase walleye we needed different gear, gear we had never even considered and the best part was we would be able to use most of that gear for the other types of fishing we do.
This list included:
Shelter - we bought a 6 man ice fishing shelter at Costco, even though they call them 6 man they are good for three comfortably, six can squeeze in and fish one hole. Additionally I was given the HT flip over shelter pictured in my last blog, we took it for a trial run, it works marvellously. It fits perfectly in the back of the truck, holds all the gear, is easily unloaded and loaded alone and provides wonderful space for fishing alone, it is quite comfortable for two fishermen. A bonus for this particular model to me is the detached chairs, most flip shelters have fixed seats, this one has two folding chairs that sit in the sled, however this is great for grabbing one, fishing outside in the best part of the day and then ducking back under cover anytime conditions dictate.
Flashers - Flashers are essentially stationary depth sounders that show quickly how deep your lure is and if there are fish in proximity, once you learn how they work they become essential...
Rods - generally fishing for small pan fish does not require much variety in your rod selection, the preference being for quality rods with soft tips and good backbones, Andrea and I "exchanged" beautiful Abu Garcia 24" ultralight combos for Christmas,
we each have a shorter rod as well, mine is an HT, hers is a Frabill.. Walleye fishing does require some variety, most serious walleye fisherman carry at least four rods and many six. Some use rods as long as 34" that are very heavy for ripping large loud hard body baits as attractants, and a variety of other rods pre-rigged with their favourite jigs and spoons to save time switching from one to the other. My heavy rod is a 30" as I find that is plenty long in a shelter, I usually carry a max of three rods in addition to that when I am fishing, Andrea does not go quite as hard core, using typically three for walleye.
Tackle - I am not even going to get into the variety of tackle required, if one were to take everything that seems to be recommended you would need an additional truck. I will say though I found a jig supplier, http://www.wonderjigs.com/ that has proved to be far cheaper than any local tackle store. If you remember my last blog about the short shanked jigs out fishing the long shanked and the glow jigs producing aggressive hits later in the day, we went to get some in Winnipeg, it was 5.00 or more for two jigs. I ordered 64 jigs from wonder jigs to my door for just under 30.00.
That is a considerable price difference, < .50 cents vice >$2.50 each. All the jigs pictured are glow jigs, two different types of hooks and they appear very sharp and strong for their size. I of course have already flattened the barbs and cleaned the eyes...much easier sitting home than while trying to use them on the ice.
Auger - being me and finding a sale it seemed like the right thing to do when I found the Eskimo V71 series with a 10 inch flyte at an affordable price, I remember the first time I fired it up on the ice (we bought it on our way fishing). I was standing on the bare ice, an area that was polished as smooth as an ice rink. I proudly assembled the flyte on the auger, filled the gas tank and prepped the auger according to directions, it fired on the second pull....that gearing on a large motor sure has a lot of torque...I was wearing old green insulated rubber boots that were really worn out years ago, but 3 inch treads would not have helped...I had not inspected the auger prior to use. The throttle cable was stuck 3/4 open, the auger was 8 - 10 inches down into the ice and the force required to drill was more than the grip supplied by my boots...can you see the picture, this grey haired chubby guy that does not dance being waltzed in a circle mercilessly by a shiny red auger!!! Andrea was of course laughing as she tried to figure out how to help, it had to have looked funny but as she tried to get close I would come spinning around again threatening to knock her flying across the ice as she reached for off switch...I of course did not dare let go, a brand new auger spinning out of control unmanned was more than my mind could comprehend in that minuscule amount of time..we did of course get it shut off and with my gerber multi tool managed to get it sorted out. After the remainder of that winter and all of the following ice season we noticed a new technology becoming more popular among the less hard core fishermen like us. Eskimo launched a new line of augers under the Ion brand, they run off a 40V lithium Ion battery and come with either a 6 or 8 inch flyte. We sold the large eskimo at the start of this season and purchased the new battery powered 8" auger...the difference is astounding, 22 lbs, no stress or tourque on the body, no yanking on pull cords, no messy gas mixes, no gas smell on your hands...a nine year old girl used mine the first time out to drill a hole in 18 inches of ice with no effort.
Heat - yes heat, out here heat is essential for a comfortable long outing on the ice, we have two heat sources - a double sunflower heater run off a 20lb propane tank, like this
We also each have a little buddy catalytic propane heater -
The little buddy heaters are very portable, great for hunting, ice fishing etc, we even ran them a couple of really bitter nights in the hunt camp. The down side to these heaters is small amount of heat they output for large spaces and the fact they run off disposable tanks, they are good for about 5 hours per tank, which is under a dollar per hour so they are cost effective in the right circumstances.
Now that we have moved again, walleye fishing is going to be a rare event, but that is OK with me, I love fishing for pan fish.and that is what we have down here...as well as some trout in a quarry that are reputed to be up to 3 feet long...I will be chasing those later this week if all goes well.
In addition to everything else we learned and acquired for this Manitoba ice fishing adventure we also met a gentleman named Rebel, we lived a good hours drive apart but made several ice fishing trips, meeting at set points and chasing "eyes", something Rebel is passionate about and very good at. (At some point I will write a blog about the day we were blessed with in his boat).
Anyway, equipment aside which we have in spades, the weather which has been abnormally cold this year, the fact that fishing buddies are few and far apart, we just have not spent any time fishing so far this year. It is supposed to warm up to seasonable or even a little above by the end of the week. This means that I anticipate some hardcore fishing time coming up soon!!! We could get up to 2 weeks of decent weather before the next cold spell interrupts so things are looking up.
One thing we ran into that has been a continuous battle is space, when we started acquiring all this extra gear we had the house in Richer, it was blessed with a 20 X 24 detached garage, a 24 X 26 detached shop, a 16 X 16 and 12 X 12 set of insulated wired outbuildings and a 12 X 24 tarp building for storing the boat. Here we have less than an acre of land, an attached 22 X 24 garage and that is it. We brought the tarp building, set it up and it was promptly destroyed by a summer storm with 50 MPH winds, given the wide open space here it was collapsed in seconds when the storm struck. I did salvage enough of the ribs to build an arch frame for under the boats tarp, seems to be working very well so far... We intended to build a shop storage building and may at some point, but that money went whirling away to purchase our hunting property...a decision we do not regret in the least.
One of the methods we have come up with to deal with this storage is to build things like this shelf - it sits off on a wall of the garage completely out of the way.
My next project is to build horizontal overhead storage for our open water rod collection...it will actually be mounted at near ceiling height, at about 9 ft, above the garage door tracks completely out of any usable space.
I think I will do another blog shortly on my gun room, and reloading gear.
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