White Ice

My Dad and I arrived in Grand Isle at around 7:30, or something like that. The goal for the day was to get on some perch. When I stepped out of the truck, the weather seemed perfect. Only a light breeze and around 29 degrees. We walked out to a spot where we had seen a lot of panfish anglers last year and the year before and cut a couple holes. Unfortunately we were soon greeted by a stiff North wind which eventually picked up to 20+ MPH gusts as a small snow squall moved through. I got out my perch rod and threaded a plastic onto the tungsten jig. I was ready to fish and the fish were ready for me. Almost instantly after lifting my jig off of bottom I had a bite and reeled in a six inch perch. I sent him on his way and sent my jig back down the hole. Another perch was waiting for it. I must’ve caught a dozen perch one right after another, all almost exactly the same length: that being small. After two minutes of jigging, I noticed something was different. Either I had caught every hungry perch in the area or... Suddenly I noticed that I couldn’t feel my jig anymore and the slack in my line and set the hook. Zzz-zzz-zzz. Whatever I had on had some serious spunk to it, with short bursts of energy, flying by my hole every three seconds in a different direction. Next thing you know a little 14 inch pickerel came flying up out of the hole, still trying to get away violently on the ice. It’s kind of fun to try to wrestle the slippery little suckers down.

After releasing the fish, I moved on to another hole and caught another half-dozen perch before that hole was dead. Then I moved on to the next. And the next catching fewer and fewer perch in each hole, until I reached a hole that didn’t produce any fish. That’s when I realized a pattern, whenever I drilled a hole in a patch of white ice or a snow drift I would get hit, but this particular hole was in crystal clear black ice. Coincidence? Maybe. But after that I primarily stayed away from the black ice and it seemed to work. About an hour or so into fishing, with no sign of the size of the fish ever improving, we began filling our buckets with the fixings for a fish fry.

Eventually the bite seemed to almost completely shut off, with only an odd ball largie every once in awhile. So I changed out my tungsten for the Hali style jig that I had caught the biggest perch of my life on, only three days before. I loaded the tiny size 12 or 14 straight shank with a couple maggots and began to dance it around six to eight inches off of bottom. Soon I noticed slack in my line and set the hook. This time the fish took off with impressive screaming runs, doubling my rod over. I was forced to loosen my drag or risk losing my newfound “favorite” lure. I fought the fish for over a minute, barely gaining anything on it. Finally the it neared the hole and it’s massive head came into view. It was a nice largemouth! I struggled getting it’s head turned up the hole as he kept on thrashing back and forth and backing himself up every time I would get him close. (4.5 inch hole + ~18 inch LMB = TROUBLE) After finessing him into the hole, I reached down and pried his mouth open, giving him a good taste of my thumb. My Dad came walking over, after seeing all the commotion, just as I removed the fish from the water. He was hooked perfect, with the tiny barb nestled right in behind his top row of teeth. When I placed the fish back in the hole he just barely fit. I certainly wouldn’t want to hook into one any bigger than that unless I was using a six or eight inch hole!

Towards the end of our trip we ended up getting back on to a school of fish, right in the vicinity of where we had first caught them. I punched the last set of holes for the day and began fishing them. We ended up catching a couple more better sized perch and once my Dad broke off on a good sized pickerel, we decided to pack it in for the day. All in all, It was a fun trip!!