How to Not Suck at Ice Fishing

Fish in the winter months can be pickier than a teenage girl picking out her first dress for the big dance. Here are five factors to understand and work around so you don’t suck on your next hardwater adventure

A lot of old timers and even bait shops have a barometer mounted to the wall. I wasn’t a believer in this black magic for a long time until I started charting my successes and failures and saw a definite correlation to barometric pressure.

High pressure can be found when we have clear blue skies, and low pressure often occurs when a storm comes through. While low pressure is significantly better than high pressure for a fishing bite, the key time is often just as these pressure systems either get ready to or make a significant change.

The good news is that you can buy a barometer for super cheap, and you can more than likely get an app on your phone for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. When picking the day you want to take off from work to fish or the time of the day you are going to start, simply referencing a barometer may help you avoid missing the best bite windows.

People mess stuff up, and ice fishing is no different. Just because you caught fish in a spot the day before doesn’t mean they will be there again. One guaranteed way to know they won’t stick around (or at least bite) is when a bunch of ice shanties pop up around you. When ice fishing being anti-social and staying away from others will pay big dividends in your productivity.

It is worth noting that open-water anglers often prefer to find fish that are up and off the bottom as they are considered to be less neutral. This is definitely the case with my preferred species of walleye that I spend 200 days per year chasing. On the hardwater, however, don’t rule out fish on or very close to the bottom. The reason is that in the winter, the water in close proximity to the bottom is actually warmer and can congregate fish that are the most aggressive and willing to bite.

This winter, I had two groups of clients on an ice trip. One was doing very well and the other claimed they weren’t seeing even a single fish on the fancy Mega Live forward-facing sonar. Being only 30 feet away and fishing on a mud basin meant something was off.

When I went to check on the fishless group, I noticed that one of the guests had used the heel of his boot to dig out at least a two-inch trough into the ice. When I told him he might see more fish if he stopped his excavating, I got an even funnier look. Literally, within a few minutes of me doing everything but stepping on his feet to quit the scratching on the ice, fish appeared. No lie.

In past years, I’ve seen the same results when a thermos is thrown onto the ice and even something as simple as walking with creepers on. Fish hear a lot more from above than you might ever imagine.

Mirroring the barometric pressure a little bit, low light is usually better for most species. There is a reason that ice anglers often refer to the first and last hours of sunlight of the day as the “golden hours.” While these periods are well known to be the best times to fish, look for the portions of the day that are supposed to be overcast. The bite windows in low overhead light almost always mean a better bite regardless of the time of day.

One thing that is often overlooked is ways to fish in the shadows, even if you have high skies. Patches of snow are great places to set up on as they provide a little bit of cover, much in the same way a duck hunter looks to conceal his setup.

Pressure cracks, ridges, or heaves that have multiple layers of ice stacked on top of themselves are also another natural way to conceal yourself. This may sound like hocus pocus until you put an underwater camera down just one time to see how much different these natural occurrences can change what it looks like under the ice.

A lot of seasoned deer hunters will tell you that moon phases matter when it comes to deer movements and overall activity. The same could be said for fishing. The difference is that what type of peak period you are looking for may change depending on the species you are going after.

Muskies often prefer things a little differently than walleyes, for example. Periods such as a new or full moon are often most desirable, and when you pair that with the barometer changing as a storm approaches, you might just have the best bite window of the month.

A good way of summing this up is to pay attention to when you are getting bites or when you are not getting any at all. There typically is some type of correlation to your success, or lack thereof. This can mean not making noise or keeping a journal of when your best and worst bite windows occur over a season. If you do that, I promise you’ll have a much better chance to not suck next ice season.