ELECTRON-TRICKS
By The On Ice Tour with Doug Newhoff
Give an angler the
best equipment available today, and you've got an angler with the
means to catch a lot of fish. Give that same angler the knowledge
and creativity to get the most out of those tools in a variety of
situations, and you've got an angler who is always the envy of
everyone else on the ice.
Once
upon a time, hard-water structure fishing was a trial-and-error
adventure that consisted of lining up shoreline landmarks or
attempting to follow obvious shoreline structure out into a lake
or reservoir. Today's electronics have changed all that.
High-definition sonar, underwater cameras and global positioning
units have taken much of the guesswork out of ice fishing, and
opened a whole new world to anglers.
"Now the whole water
column is at your disposal, from shoreline to shoreline," says
professional angler Tommy Skarlis, co-founder of On-Ice Tour. "The
trick is to use your electronics in unison to really break down
and understand a certain situation. GPS, sonar and underwater
cameras are great complements to one another."
The benefits of GPS
systems are obvious. Primarily, they lead an angler to specific
target areas. Using GPS over hard water, explains On-Ice
co-founder Chip Leer, can be even more valuable than its
applications during the open-water season.
"The beauty of GPS,
if you look at summer fishing versus winter fishing, is that you
can pick spots apart better through the ice. You can refine your
existing GPS coordinates and put new marks on those exact spots
where you want to be.”
"We've all seen
situations where one corner of the ice fishing shelter is
producing all the fish. There's usually something important there,
whether it's the tip of a rock finger or a small hump."
Sonar and underwater
cameras go hand-in-hand for both ice-angling enthusiasts.
Several companies
make hand-held sonar units that help anglers find a particular
depth or piece of structure when GPS isn't an option.
StrikeMaster's PolarVision unit is about the size of a
flashlight. "It helps you shoot quickly through the ice, even in
the worst ice conditions," says Skarlis. "You can use your regular
sonar unit for that, but it's a lot more cumbersome."
To facilitate the
use of a PolarVision unit, Leer keeps a small squirt bottle of
water in his pocket that he uses to efficiently squirt on the ice
before taking a reading.
"Something else you
can do is put the transducer into a plastic bag filled with water
or a non-freezable liquid," Leer adds. "You eliminate the air and
tape the bag shut. Then you can simply place that on the ice to
get a reading."
From there, the
On-Ice experts turn to their Vexilar FL-18 units to further
evaluate the world beneath them.
The first trick,
notes Leer, is setting the "gain" at the proper level.
"You want to turn it
up just enough to see your bait," he explains. "My experience has
been that if you run it too high, the targets become thicker and
wider bands that can be confusing. There might be two fish down
there, but it looks like a big blob.
"You need size
definition. Being able to separate fish and separate your jig from
the fish can help you read how the fish are responding to your
jigging technique."
The FL-18 offers a
dual-screen option that allows anglers to view the entire column
and a target zone at the same time. That can be helpful when fish
suddenly rise up in the column at some point during the day.
Dual transducer
cones are another advantage.
"You can use the
narrower beam in deeper water and the wider beam in shallower
water," says Leer. "Cone angle can make a big difference in
determining how far that fish is away from you and your bait, and
how far you are able to pull them."
Along that same
line, attaching the transducer to a shaft turns it into a
side-viewing unit that might point out fish just outside the cone
angle.
Sometimes, current
becomes a factor that must be dealt with. Leer recalls an outing
on the Saginaw River when the current was pulling his jigging
spoon outside the cone angle.
"It was one of those
days when, if it wasn't for electronics, we never would have
caught a fish," he relates.
"We had to drill a
second hole outside and downstream of our Fish Trap shelter for
the transducer," he relates. "Then we could see what our jigging
spoons were doing, and we found out that the walleyes were
following them, but wouldn't hit until they were four feet below
the ice.
"We caught 27 or 28
walleyes that night, and we never caught one fish until the bait
was four feet below the ice. You had to pull it up and tease them,
pull it up and tease them ... Finally, at that four-foot mark they
had to make a decision.
"That was a very
educational couple of days of fishing."
Skarlis says
learning what to read into the band that identifies the bottom on
sonar units is equally valuable. The intensity of the band not
only tells the angler whether it's a hard or soft bottom.
"Sometimes, you can
be on a lip or a break going from shallow water to deep water, and
you can read that on your sonar by the width and intensity of the
band," he notes. "That can be critical to finding the active
fish."
Underwater cameras
bring everything into focus.
Sonar units allow
the angler to watch fish approach a lure, but they don't always
provide a clear understanding of what's happening.
"If I'm catching
fish and I want to know why, I can use the camera to identify the
bottom content. I can use it to show me exactly what species are
down there," says Skarlis. "If I'm fishing around weeds, the
camera will let me know if they are dead, brown weeds the fish
don't like or if they're the green weeds fish seem to relate to."
Equally important,
the underwater camera shows exactly what's is, or isn't, below the
angler.
"You don't want to
fish all day for what you think are bluegills, and they turn out
to be bullheads," adds Skarlis. "It's the same thing with size.
Why spend your time fishing in an area full of small perch when
you could be moving around looking for the jumbos?"
The most intriguing
and often the most valuable aspect is watching the drama of a
hungry fish as it encounters an angler's bait.
"I've seen a lot of
instances where you'd wait until the two lines on the FL-18 come
together, but you couldn't feel the bite," Skarlis relates.
"With a camera, you
can watch the lure disappear into the fish's mouth. I had a
bluegill bite last year where that was happening. I put the
Aqua-Vu down there and saw that the fish were either grabbing my
Fat Boy jig by the head, or just grabbing the tip of the Power
Bait.
"Once I could
visibly see the hook go into the fish's mouth, I started hooking
up with a lot more fish. You could also tell when a fish just
picked off the bait. You didn't have to reel it all the way up to
tell."
Sometimes, different
jigging techniques trigger bites. The camera allows an angler to
see how fish respond to various approaches. Leer said it can be
fun to record an outing and study it later.
"You can hook most
of them up to a VCR or a digital recorder," he explained. "You can
replay and study your jigging techniques or show them to somebody
else. It's kind of like a football team reviewing game films on
Monday."
Leer also
appreciates the advances in technology that have followed
underwater cameras onto the ice-fishing scene.
"It used to be that
everyone got a flasher before they'd get a camera," he noted. "Now
I think a camera has more appeal to a lot of anglers, especially
those who fish as a family. The Aqua-Vu has accessories that tell
you how deep the lens is, what direction you are looking and what
the water temperature is. Insert the lens cable into the slot in
the Frontview/Downview fin and you get a great look at what's
directly below your hole. You can buy a 10-inch magnifier, too,
that allows multiple people to look at the screen at the same
time."
Leer said another
advantage to underwater cameras is their ability to show what's
happening from several angles.
"You can look out to
the sides of the hole or get an overhead view," he explained.
"There's an accessory called the Ice Pod which holds the lens
securely in one particular direction. Simply rotate the Ice Pod to
look in different directions. All these toys make it a lot of
fun”
Acquiring the right
electronics will definitely make anyone a better ice angler.
Learning the tricks of the trade will advance an angler to a point
that will leave the fish with no place to hide.
