Behind the Scenes Look at "Ice Fishing School"
What a show! What an education! This episode of Ice Fishing Today highlighted an event that has simply never done before. Imagine bringing together the biggest names in ice fishing for a one on one, hands-on education in ice fishing. This event was a real challenge for the IFT cameras. It was hard to be at so many events at the same time. With so much to see and do, you never knew where the action would be. In many ways it was the perfect scenario for IFT the TV show since we could show you on-line all of the extra footage we shot as it was almost seven hours of tape! Our team arrived early with the dream to catch some monster walleye for the cameras, but those monster Superior walleye wanted nothing to do with us.
A big storm blew in, and it was clear the fish were turned off. Jim Hudson and his crew punched 300 holes in Chequamegon Bay that seemed to cover a good two miles of ice, but the walleyes were gone, vanished. The old saying, “we should have been here yesterday” was thrown around a lot by the group. It was clear the weather killed off this project, so we pulled out early and prepared for the school and the arriving instructors and guests.
The weather forecast was for stable, warming weather and light winds. This is perfect for the on-ice portion of the school and the weatherman was right for once. The weather for the entire school was perfect, sunny calm and warm. It got down right hot at times. The lake accesses were flooding and a little rough, but with 30 inches of good ice under the newly melted snow, it was just a little wet getting on and off the lake. Everyone drove out on the bay. However, sleds and ATV’s were used when heading outside the bay due to the ever shifting ice conditions several miles off shore, but that is classic Lake Superior.
Jim Hudson and his wonderful wife Hannah did a first class job lining up the speakers, creating workshops and instructors for this event. For me, the workshops were very special in that eight students at a time would visit a presentation area set-up by the instructors for some one on one questions and answers. Every twenty minutes Hannah would ask everyone to move to the next station.
The student body was split into three groups; one would go to the islands the first day to fish lake trout, while another group would stay right in town and fish “the bay”. The third group went near the Washburn area on the North side of the bay to fish areas outside inflowing rivers for rainbow and brown trout. Each day the group would rotate to a new fishing venue, so you experienced it all.
On the TV segment, we were unable to show you the Rainbow and Brown trout action. The fish were only in about three feet of water with about of foot of ice. The secret was not to make any noise on the ice as the fish came into the shallows. A special kind of tip-up was used called the “Automatic Fisherman” to catch these fish. The bait of choice was a spawn sack suspended about two feet down the hole. The best times for action were sunrise and sunset. The IFT cameras showed up just at dark and captured some footage of classic Superior rainbows and browns on camera, be sure to check it out as on the IFT extras.
The lake trout fishing was actually a fun adventure. While the fish taken during the filming were not too large, the group actually caught a lot of good eaters in the 3 to 5 pound range. Again, the time restraints of the show limited how many fish we could show being caught, Captain Craig Putchat, who guided the class of 12 anglers, did an outstanding job showing them how to do it.
The most amazing thing to me was the fact that you could use a Vexilar to see your jig in 265 feet of water and actually fish it as if you were only in 30 feet of water! The idea of visually seeing a four inch long jig nearly 100 yards away with your naked eye is crazy enough, but the Vexilar FL-18 had no problem seeing it.
The fascinating thing about these deep water trout is that they use the currents below the ice to feed and anglers need to know how to set their lines to intercept these feeding fish, once you get in a good line of fish, you really can catch them. Three members of our group caught their five fish limits and then some. This was a case where your normal fishing gear simply is not designed to work at these depths. You defiantly need to be able to work with a local guide to help you get up to speed with tackle and lures. This is a different world for sure and Captain Craig does it better than anyone I have ever met.
The fishing action in the bay with instructor Jim Hudson was strange, but the biggest thing to me was something I talked about in the actual broadcast version of the show. While fifty fish were caught in the first few hours using one rod and a Vexilar, the 20 tip-ups never produced a fish! This was a big eye opener for many of the students that considered tip-up fishing as the only way to catch big fish. I was also shocked to see big white suckers hitting our baits as well as Coho. The monster smallmouth bass were simply amazing to hold. I don’t think any of the students ever caught a smallmouth through the ice before, so it was a wonderfully rewarding experience.
