A First-Ice Primer - Decoying Panfish
By Brian Brosdahl

Ten degrees is not a bad place for the mercury to level off in the thermometer when you’re planning a day on the ice, unless the wind is blowing.  Gusts up to 25 miles an hour were reported so I knew this wasn’t going to be one of those days when I could stand over the hole unprotected.  When I pulled up to the lake access I could see I wasn’t the only one who thought this as I looked out over a white and gray landscape dotted with blue.  The ice was still too thin for the stationary shelters to start showing up, but that didn’t stop the anglers with their portables from resting in comfort over the most productive bay on the lake.

Sunfish were moving around in the vegetation sucking up whatever forage rose from the mud and the crappies were mingled in chasing the minnows that were dodging the sunfish.  There was a lot of movement on the ice while anglers were drilling holes and setting up, and I knew from experience that this would slow the bite.

When word gets out on a first-ice hotspot it can result in a crowd of anglers.  The commotion from the drilling and stomping around in the shallows will put the fish into a cautious mode which often turns the hotspot into a marginal location.  While I could have moved to a different area, I knew there were fish there and I knew what to do to catch them.

The first thing I did was move about 100 yards from the group.  I’m not anti-social; I just like to catch fish.  I only drilled a few holes until I found a nice opening in the weed bed where I could set up an Aqua-Vu underwater viewing system and watch the sunfish and crappies move in and out of the zone.

I also drilled a hole for the decoy and dropped it in right away.  The decoy is a six-to eight-inch sucker minnow that not only attracts the panfish to my location, but also provides a meal worth eating for an inquisitive pike.

The sucker is suspended under a tip-up style arrangement.  Since I like to use a rod and reel to fight the fish, I use the Arctic Warrior by Clam Corporation.  It allows an ice-fishing rod and reel to be set up as a tip-up and when a fish bites you can set the hook and reel it in.  Some anglers like to use a hand-over-hand approach to battling big pike, I like the feel and excitement of battling a fish with a rod and reel.

But on this day, pike weren’t on my mind.  This was first-ice sunfish and crappie fishing and the sucker did its job.  Not only will a sucker minnow attract panfish, it holds them there.  I’ve often found that big bluegills will move in schools.  That’s the problem, they like to move.  By the time you hook one, reel it in and take it off the hook, the rest might already be gone.  For some reason, that sucker tends to hold them on the spot so you can work on them for awhile before they move on.

The camera showed some nice sunfish under the holes.  They were falling easily to a glow-jig and two colored maggots.  I also had a small jigging spoon with a number-eight hook rigged with a crappie minnow sitting next to me and it paid off.

After I hooked and landed about a dozen big bluegills three hefty crappies moved into the camera angle.  I pulled up the maggots and dropped the minnow and before it even came to rest one of those crappies inhaled it. 

The sucker never got touched that day.  It did, however, attract lots of panfish.

Of course the wind died down as I was getting ready to pull up stakes and leave.  In the community of Fish Traps I passed through as I headed back to my truck there were kids playing football on the snow-covered ice.  More ice anglers were pulling their portables out to join the crowd and occasionally I would see someone set the hook or hear a howl from inside one of the shelters.  For some it was a great day to be on the ice.  For me it was a great day to be catching fish.

Brian “Bro” Brosdahl is a fishing guide and a Clam Corp. Pro-Staffer.  For more information visit www.clamcorp.com.