Hard Water Fishing

Cabin fever, and a good fishing buddy, forced me to go out fishing, and when you're this far North this time of the year, fishing means through the ice. Now many may think this is a crazy idea, to go out in the cold, on the ice, and freeze your butt off for a few pan fish, especially when there's a playoff game on TV, but that's exactly what I did.
I woke up to 4 degree temps. Darn it, colder than they predicted. So I texted my buddy to make sure he was bringing his Ice Shanty and propane heater. I brought a lot of cloths and an underwater video camera. We were all set.
We drove out the Neilsens Channel here in Northern Illinois, on the Fox River, part of the great Chain of Lakes. A nice series of lakes, that are busier than heck in the summer with pleasure boaters. But now, with water turned to ice, we were relatively alone. We encountered maybe a dozen other fishermen on our mile or so walk to a specific spot in a specific channel off the main river. You have to be careful, the main river still has open water, but the channels have about a foot on ice on them. Heck, they say you can fish on only 3 inches of ice, but we always feel better with 6 inches of ice or more, especially with a river nearby, and the potential for changing currents.

We've been here before, and we've always had good luck. It may not seem fair, but it's always a blast to fish these waters with an underwater camera. The fish are there, there are plenty of them. In this cold water, they get pretty lethargic. They don't move much and they don't eat much. You have to use small baits and slow presentations. And the camera showed that you also had to find just the right fish that would take your bait. We seen so many fish just swim past out baits slowly without even twitching a fin in interest towards our jig. If I had to guess, I'd say that we would see a dozen fish in the camera before we'd find a couple that would be at all interested, and only one of those would actually mouth the bait. It was like they were hibernating, and actually they probably are in some sort of reduced exertion hibernation state, just waiting for the Spring warm up, as we all are!


Traditionally, we would see and catch many Bluegill, plus a few Crappie at this location. And this day proved true to form. Between the three of us, we probably caught 4 dozen Bluegill, bringing half those home as keepers. My friend Tom was the only one to hook into any Crappie. He caught a couple nice ones. Well, nice ones here, in the Winter time is roughly 10-11 inches. Small by some standards, but they eat good any way you look at it!
What surprised me was what else we seen in the water. It was very active down there. We seen large Shad, Suckers, Northern Pike and Bass. This was quite unusual and hopefully a good sign for what to expect in 2011. Take a look at the pictures. The Bass just seemed to hang out and stare into the camera. They certainly were not shy. They were way more interested in the camera than the Wax Worms we had on our jigs. Oh well, they stuck around for some nice shots though. The two Northers I saw went though too quick to take a picture.
Another thing to note is, nothing seems to spook them. The ice would crack underneath our feet, other fishermen would be power drilling holes nearby. Particularly since we were only in 3-4 feet of water, it was funny that the fish just didn't care. Even if you had 3 gills staring at your bait, and you caught one, the other two would not flinch. They would just stay there, and sometimes you'd have time to freshen the bait and put your jig back in front of them. It was too funny.
All in all, it was a fun day, watching and catching fish over the hard water. If you've never done it, it might be worth a trip so that at least you can tell the stories. And if you have access to an underwater camera, all the better. It's use over ice is unparalleled. The camera stays still, the water under the ice is clear. The fish move though the colder water slower. A wonderful way to observe our quarry in the wild.