Piecing Together My First Ice Fishing Trip of the Season

Fishing this fall has been tough. I've been on a quest to catch my first Great Lakes steelhead which has been unsuccessful thus far, hence the lack of recent blog posts. Around December, as the weather cooled and the chaos of the holiday season started to ramp up, my mind started drifting (no pun intended) away from trying for a tributary steelhead to ice fishing.

It's hard to catch steelhead when people can just Google fishing spots

Getting ready for a fishing trip is like a puzzle in that it's best when you have all the pieces and you take the time to put them together properly. As Christmas neared I decided it was time to start finding the pieces to the puzzle that was my first ice fishing trip of the season. The first piece, the one that I feel I have the most control over, is gear. I began my preparations by scouring the internet for a new portable shelter as I had left my old pop-up with a friend back in Calgary. After I found a used shelter I could afford, I found myself driving out to different tackle shops more often then usual to stock up on an assortment of new lures and line to ensure I wouldn't run out of anything while out fishing.

Piece number 1

As I became more and more well equipped the next puzzle piece I needed was a suitable day to go. The Christmas season in Southern Ontario was unusually warm which just made the waiting longer and more difficult. At great strain to my marriage I spent hours on various message boards looking for updates on local ice conditions.

Close to the beginning of January the forecasts called for a week-long cold snap and the message boards started to fill with news of thickening ice and questions about parking spots and places to buy minnows. Needless to say, my preparations started to become more frantic as I was finally able to put my finger on a date for my first trip onto the hardwater this winter.

The weekend neared and my anticipation grew. Now the next piece of the puzzle I began to search for is one that is nice to have but not totally necessary: a partner. I started sending messages to all my friends who I thought may be at least slightly interested in joining me and what do you know, I even found someone who was able to make the trip. All the pieces, except one, were coming together nicely.

The night before our planned trip, my friend Jared came over and we went over all of our stuff. We even found a local shop that sold live minnows. The last piece of the puzzle we needed was the weather which, as we all know, is often the hardest piece to find.

As Jared and I sat chatting over beers, I surfed over to The Weather Network's website and was absolutely mortified at what I saw. The forecast called for -13 degrees Celsius which is not a huge deal but below that was written, "wind gusts up to 50km/h making it feel more like -27". Now some hardcore ice fishermen may venture out on days like that but the prospect of walking two thirds of a kilometer out to the middle of Lake Simcoe's Cook's Bay in 50 km/h winds was a little much for us.

Frantically I searched the internet for an alternative with at least a slightly friendlier forecast. I decided to check the Grand River Conservation Authority website on a prayer to see if Belwood Lake would have safe ice and much to my surprise I found that another conservation area, that was actually closer to me, was ready for ice fishing. I checked the forecast for the area and saw that I had finally found the last piece. The weather would be perfect as long as I was willing to wait one extra day. Unfortunately, Jared had to work that day but like I said, not having a fishing partner isn't really a huge deal (with friends like me, who needs enemies, eh?).

The morning of the trip, with everything I needed in place, I woke up early and drove out to the lake. The puzzle was complete and the day went exactly as I'd hoped.

A pike I landed after a sketchy fight on 3lb. test and no leader

I remembered all my gear, the fish were biting and the weather held up. The only wildcard of the day, my dull hand-auger, even managed to get through the ice without too much trouble. I aggressively jigged a minnow-tipped Northland Buckshot spoon to draw fish toward me and then a small minnow on a drop shot rig proved to be the fish catching pattern of the day. The perch action was steady except for the few times a pike cruised by under the ice. I ended up with over a dozen perch and a little pike which, on 3 lb. test line and an inline reel with a 1:1 gear ratio, felt more like a 30 pound trophy. I don't often bring fish home but who can pass up cold water perch? Also, I really can't think of a better way to celebrate a month of puzzle building than a meal of fried, freshly caught perch.

Perch feed

Mourning The Loss of a Dream Pike Fishing Spot

For months, I had been waiting anxiously for winter to end but my longing for spring had very little to do with the weather. From what I saw on the news this winter, I think we got off easy here in Southern Alberta. Even though we got an early May snowstorm, a long wait for warm temperatures and sunshine is just part of life here. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if we got another big snow in June.

The real reason I was looking forward to spring was Northern Pike. Specifically hauling the long toothy fish out of our secret pike fishing spot.

Our spot was a once-in-a-lifetime gem. It was one of those places that you sometimes hear about and wish whoever was bragging about it would somehow offer to take you there even though you know you can't simply ask them to. Less than a square kilometre in area, we could easily fish every inch of the shoreline in a couple of hours. Twenty-plus fish mornings and double or triple headers were not only possible but common.

A standard "Pike Pond" pike

Another healthy pike from "Pike Pond"

The fish weren't just plentiful. Many of them were also big. My personal best at "Pike Pond" was a 12 pound pike I caught casting spoons from shore on a sunny late-spring afternoon. My friend Chris managed to pull a 15 pound gator out of the pond early last fall and I have seen much bigger fish chase smaller fish as we fought them to shore. All fishermen are liars, but I swear some of the bigger fish I saw gliding out of the depths had to be over twenty pounds.

A 12 pound pike. Bigger ones lurked in the depths.

This is the type of spot that fishes well so consistently that it's easy to take for granted. I'm really glad I never let that happen.

Two weeks ago I got word that ice was finally off the pond.  The evening before our first spring pike trip of the season I took the time to make sure all my rods, jerk baits, swim baits, spoons, crank baits, leaders, spreaders, pliers and everything else I would need were carefully accounted for and packed up for the morning. It's funny how it's so hard to fall asleep the night before a long-anticipated fishing trip yet it's so easy to get out of bed the morning of.

When we drove up to the spot we noticed that the planned subdivision development had begun as there was a team of yellow excavators parked in a freshly graded field beside the reservoir. There was also a new culvert spilling water into the southeast corner of the pond.

We didn't think much of the development. We knew this day was coming. We felt lucky to be able to fish the pond for one more season before the construction began on the new "lakefront community" that was being built. I did find it a little strange to see a few dead perch washed up on shore but we paid no mind to it, tied on some spoons, and started casting.

Right away, I found it weird that we weren't getting strikes or seeing followers. Further testament to how awesome this spot was.

We continued fishing unsuccessfully around the pond and we kept seeing dead fish here and there on the shore. It was impossible not to think that something was wrong.

As we approached the far side of the pond we saw what we had been beginning to dread. In a corner of the reservoir were hundreds of dead pike and perch. Along the entire side of the pond the water was littered with fish carcasses big and small. We kept casting but it was clear that a mass die-off had occurred and the spot was pretty much done. With the new subdivision being built, it probably wouldn't be coming back either. Every angler knows what it's like to lose that one monster fish. I now know what it's like to lose literally all of them.

When we realized things were really not good

Had we caught these fish before?

So what happened? I have heard of winterkill on several small trout lakes around Alberta. But like I mentioned above, the winter wasn't abnormally bad here and pike and perch are pretty hardy. A friend of mine who works in the water treatment industry suspects something more sinister. He hypothesized that the land developer may have used chlorinated water to sanitize the water line connections for the new community and may have dumped the spent water directly into the pond, thus "sanitizing" our pike spot. I'm not really in any position go much past speculation but that would be pretty unfortunate if true.

I've been hurting to go fishing lately. Pike Pond was supposed to be my big fix this spring before summer bass fishing in Ontario. Maybe this is a sign for me to put down my lead-chucker for a while to focus on tightening my loops in the Bow River until runoff arrives.

At Northern Alberta's Island Lake Lodge, the Five of Diamonds Reigns Supreme

A Big Island Lake walleye

Last month, my friends Adam Ellis, Steve Priestly and I went on our first fly-in fishing trip to *Island Lake Lodge on Big Island Lake in Northern Alberta.

Island Lake Lodge is a full service fishing lodge in Alberta's Birch Mountains Wildland Provincial Park. Guests can target trophy walleye and northern pike on Big Island Lake and on neighbouring Gardiner Lake.

A year of anticipation mixed with the lodge’s isolation and my tendency to believe everything I read in fishing magazines meant only one thing; some of the most epic tackle shopping trips ever embarked upon by amateur fishermen.

Organizing new gear

Pre-shopping conversations went kind of like this: “Oh look, people are slaying big pike on these big, 24k gold-plated spoons with the treble hook swapped out for a siwash hook dressed with white curly-tailed musky grub. I better get a couple of those spoons, a box of those hooks and a bag of big grubs and extras of everything ‘cause you know, we can’t just walk to the local tackle shop when we’re in the middle of nowhere…”

Needless to say, we spent nearly as much money on new gear as we did on the trip itself. Still, throughout the whole planning process one lure kept appearing in our research. Every so often during our reading, we would be reminded of the effectiveness of the classic Len Thompson Five of Diamonds spoon. The day before the trip Bob, from Island Lake Lodge, called to see if we could bring up some supplies for the lodge on our flight. He concluded the phone call by saying, “Hope you got your Five of Diamonds ready for the lake!”

The Five of Diamonds

Not unfamiliar with the classic yellow and red spoons, we each bought a few in different sizes to top off our tackle collections. After all, the five dollar spoons were just a drop in the tackle pond when the smoke cleared and the receipts were handed across the counter.

New tackle carefully unwrapped and organized, the much anticipated trip finally arrived. We made the seven hour drive from Calgary to Fort McMurray, stayed a night in a Fort Mac motel and flew to Island Lake Lodge the next morning. As soon as we got off the plane and introduced ourselves to the lodge proprietors and other guests, the conversation predictably turned to fishing. Again, we were reminded of the Five of Diamonds spoon and Bob even went so far as to say that it was "the hottest lure on the lake."

To keep things simple, and inline with our tendency to believe every tip we hear, we all tied on a Five of Diamonds and decided to start by casting the spoons along weedlines and at points for pike. As expected the pike action was fast and furious almost immediately. More surprising to us were the incidental walleye hookups we started getting while casting traditional pike spoons toward traditional pike structure.

Adam's river walleye

This continued all week. Many trips out started and finished with a Five of Diamonds spoon on the end of our lines. Adam even caught a 7 pound walleye casting a Five of Diamonds spoon into the little river we were waiting to travel down to Gardiner Lake. Actually, most of our best fish of the week were caught on Five of Diamonds spoons. Naturally we lost a few of the spoons as well and Steve ended up buying the entire stock of the deadly yellow lures for sale in the main lodge.

Of course, numbers of fish were caught on other lures as well. Trolling plastic swim baits was my favourite walleye presentation of the week and Steve did well with a perch-coloured spoon too. Still, this trip reminded all of us that there is a reason certain lures, that don’t look like anything a fish will ever encounter let alone eat, consistently sell well over the years.

And in case you’re wondering, I did tie on one of those 24k gold plated spoons with a single siwash hook dressed with a white curly-tailed grub…just to say I used it before I tied my Five of Diamonds back on and got back into the fish.

A decent walleye caught while casting Five of Diamonds for pike

A nice pike Adam caught on the the Five of Diamonds just before we left

Steve with a nice Gardiner Lake pike

A pike caught on the Five of Diamonds

Adam, Steve, me and our unofficial guide, Dean, at Island Lake Lodge

*If the pictures don't speak for themselves, we had an amazing and successful week at Island Lake Lodge thanks to Jim, Bob and Agnes.