2/12/2001
- Article
Scrappy
and without Limits
By Noel Vick with On Ice Tour
Piranhas
of the ice-fishing belt, or as Chip Leer of On Ice Tour calls them,
“shiner minnows on steroids”.
Cold-blooded
fishes, which actually prefer winter to summer, mix and mingle in
voluminous packs. With
silvery-sided runs of passion and gluttony they swallow whole what
they can and shred what they cannot.
100
catches a day are common.
We’re
talking tullibees; call them ciscoes if you will. And from now until ice fishing’s black-iced finale,
winter’s piranhas will be in peak form.
These
overgrown baitfish are more common than believed. Ice fishing country – understood as regions that support at
least walkable amounts of ice – is laden with tullibee waters.
Tullibees are known as fishes of “big water”, occupying
giants like Minnesota’s Lake Mille Lacs and Leech Lake, as well as
the Great Lakes. But
they’re far more widespread than believed.
Numerous one, two, and three thousand-acre lakes maintain
sizable tullibee populations. Such
waters often go unnoticed by anglers, but not by tullibee predators. Rich in nourishment and easy to digest, sleekly designed
tullibees are preferred forage of larger walleyes, northern pike,
muskies, and lake trout; immature tullibee fall prey to nearly all
meat eating fishes.
Depth
and large surface acreage are habitat characteristics associated
with tullibee fruition. You
won’t find tullibee in weed-choked shallows; it’s too warm.
Occasionally, though, tullibees make wintertime binges across
the shallows. But
generally speaking, tullibees prefer the coolest water available,
and that usually means deep.
Why
do tullibees turn white hot in March?
Minnesota DNR fisheries biologist, Harlan Feinstein, provides
some insight…
“They
school pretty tight and feed heavily all year long.”
“In
the summer, anglers rarely use tiny jigs, or look for smaller fish
suspending over deep water. If
they did, they’d be surprised at the results.
There’s just more folks targeting them in the winter.”
“During
late ice,” says Feinstein, “tullibee gather over deep
soft-bottomed areas looking for mayfly larvae, and working columns
of zooplankton.”
Feinstein
also pointed out that tullibee and whitefish, a close but larger
relative, inhabit many of the same environs.
Tullibees, which range from a ¼-pound to 2-pounds, can be
distinguished from whitefish by examining their mouthparts.
Tullibees possess a “mouth forward” physique, especially
the lower jaw, whereas a whitefish’s snout protrudes past its
jaws. Feinstein says that it’s fairly easy to recognize the
differences if you see a tullibee and whitefish lying side by side.
Additionally, whitefish are typically much larger.
For example, Minnesota’s state record whitefish, which was
recently set on Leech Lake, weighed 12 pounds, 5 ounces.
The North Star State’s tullibee record stands at 4 pounds,
3 ounces.
During
late ice, locating tullibees is an exercise in working steep breaks
and deep basin areas.
Chip
searches big bays for troughs and holes.
You know that old “hole” that local elders talked about
since your childhood? That’s
the sort of place tullibees hang out.
Steeply
breaking points on the main lake also get high marks.
Chip’s
partner, professional angler, Tommy Skarlis says, “Big points are
number one on my list. Before
heading out, I scan a hydrological lake map and look for points that
quickly drop to 20, 30, 40, or 50-feet of water.”
Because
of a tullibee’s propensity to suspend, electronics are a must.
In a 30-foot column of water, for example, tullibees might
use the entire lower 20-feet.
Chip
won’t even drop a lure until he’s first seen fish on the screen.
Toting a portable flasher, he moves from hole to hole
watching for lit and flickering bars.
Another
bonus of tullibee fishing is that you don’t have to carry a lot of
tackle. Keep it simple.
Go
small and flashy.
On
Ice Tour’s Brian “Bro” Brosdahl summons tullibees with a
miniature, silver-patterned jigging spoon loaded with Eurolarvae.
His favorite: a 1/16th-ounce Northland Forage
Minnow. He throws it
down, watches his flasher for marks, and taunts any fish that
appear. Sometimes,
marks raising off the lake floor result in jumbo perch, which
ain’t bad either.
Tullibees
aren’t bashful. They’ll
make turbo runs at a spoon that’s jiggling above, or below.
Tease them a taste and prepare for impact. No strike? Quickly
drop or raise the spoon – take it away.
Often, this technique, in repetition, aggravates a tulibee
and impels it to snap.
Tullibees
have undersized mouths, dictating a change to smaller than usual
hooks. And for those
times when they’re not engulfing trebles, try employing a dropline.
Create a dropline by first removing the treble hook from a
flashy, clattery spoon, such as a System Tackle Rattl’r Spoon.
Next, tie in a short four to six-inch segment of four-pound
test monofilament to the hook-free split ring.
To the dangling open line, tie on a small, but colorful ice
jig, and cover it with wax worms. Now you have the best of both worlds…the flamboyant spoon
lures fish in while the tiny ice jig acts as a dainty appetizer.
If
you’ve never experienced hand-over-fist tullibee action, this is
the March of your content. A
long and exceedingly cold winter built ice unlike we’ve seen in
years. And unless laws changed during the last few minutes, there
are no closed seasons for tullibees, and in most regions, there are
no established limits, although words like “discretion”,
“prudence”, and “commonsense” come to mind.
Did
I mention how delectable smoked tullibee is with Ritz crackers?
On
Ice Tour is an intensive effort directed at expanding the sport of
ice fishing. Cofounders
Chip Leer and Tommy Skarlis offer public seminars and kid’s
clinics; appear at in-store events; exhibit at sport shows and ice
fishing competitions; broadcast a weekly radio show and conduct
hands-on product demonstrations.
On Ice Tour produces an annual ice fishing publication (On
Ice), and they can be found on the Internet at www.onicetour.com
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