Innholdsfortegnelse for December/January/February 2025 i In-Fisherman

Professional walleye angler Gary Roach was the first I remember suggesting that fish become wary of, or get turned off by, sonar pulses. He would strategically turn off his electronics, at times, once he found fish, both on ice and open water. Some anglers, including Roach, believed this phenomenon remained at play when LCD technology hit the market in the mid 1980s, and throughout other sonar advancements along the road to today. Meanwhile, we kept looking and experimenting but could not see definitive evidence of the claim, although early on we certainly addressed the fact that fishing pressure was often at work making fish wearier and difficult to catch. In-Fisherman has also always been all about the science involved, but science, too, did little to address the mystery of whether…

As we will soon celebrate the 50th Anniversary of In-Fisherman, we might note on behalf of the topic at hand, that we were there at the beginning of the parade that is ice fishing for pike; or at least there at the beginning of much improved fishing for pike. The abandonment of rigging with giant hooks, including oddly shaped smelt hooks, in favor of what we termed quick-strike rigging, mostly with two small tandem trebles, forever changed the course of pike fishing. Quick-strike rigging, even with some of the ponderous rigs still often put into play today, has vastly improved catches. Anglers don’t miss many fish, and once they understand not to wait to set hooks, fish almost always are hooked shallow enough so they can be successfully released—which should…

Black bass fisheries have existed since people colonized the United States. Florida bass in Florida, largemouth bass from the Southeast to the upper Midwest, smallmouth bass in streams and rivers of the highlands from the Tennessee Valley to the Ozarks and in numerous northern lakes, as well as other species in the black bass clan dotting the landscape from the Appalachians to the Rockies. But the great expansion of large reservoirs that began in the 1930s, peaked in the 1960s, and then declined in the 1970s provided millions of acres of new bass habitat and bass fishing opportunities. While bass fishing had long quietly existed in natural lakes, notably in Florida and the upper Midwest, and in rivers and streams, the rapid growth of bass fishing coincided with the rapid…

Directional Hearing in Fish Science Discoveries—Whether it’s a firecracker popping, a car horn, or a dog barking in the distance, we can tell which direction a sound is coming from. Sounds travel through the air as oscillations of motion and pressure, and humans and other terrestrial animals determine the direction of the source of a sound based on the time difference when pressure is detected in one ear versus the other. Now, if you’re submerged underwater and someone in the area slaps the water surface, you wouldn’t be able to determine the direction of the sound’s source with any accuracy. That’s because sound travels so much more quickly underwater—about 5 times faster than in air—that we lose our ability to detect time delays in pressure from one ear to the…

Cold-water smallmouths are different animals. Literally. In his revolutionary book, Knowing Bass, Dr. Keith Jones relates how research proves that bass undergo physiological changes every time the temperature changes by just a few degrees. “With falling temperatures,” he writes, “the bass replaces the more viscous fats in its cell membranes with more fluid versions.” That keeps things flowing more evenly in those membranes, but that’s just one example of how bass adapt physically to the cold. All kinds of biochemical adjustments take place. There’s “acid-base balancing,” a “shift from one set of cellular enzymes to another,” an addition of “more aerobic muscle mass,” and many other adaptations. “For every drop of 18°F in body temperature, a bass’s metabolic rate is reduced to one third it’s previous rate. With each degree…

“It’s just me out here, and an old timer in a small wheelhouse,” I explained over the phone to an ice buddy who was to fish with me in a back bay a few Januarys ago. He was having a hard time locating us, not because my shelter was hard to find on this sprawling south-central Minnesota lake, but because that the location was so out of the ordinary. “Nope, it’s not near that hump by the access or the south point; it’s past that and in the back bay,” I explained. “Huh,” was about all I heard in response. I replied, “Don’t worry, we can move if it’s dead. I just moved here, and it doesn’t seem like the old guy is getting any either; it’s pretty quiet over…

If you’re a frequent angler of marginally frozen waters, it’s likely that you’re well aware of the benefit an airboat can provide to ice anglers. While there’s always an awe factor the first time you see or ride in one, the real amazement comes from the flexibility it gives you as an ice angler. Early ice now decades ago, I was trying to get to a spot on the Mississippi River backwaters where powerline bases were dug out and deeper than the rest of the surrounding shallow area. On an exploratory mission, I came to find an old yellow airboat sitting right on top of what were likely a mix of crappies, bluegills, and perch, while I stared at about 100 yards of open water between myself and the good…

Doc Acts Up Whatever is driving the extreme weather around the globe is acutely felt by folks like us who enjoy the great outdoors. One year we’d fly out of Sioux Lookout into a Knobby’s outpost lake, and it would be 94 and dead calm. The next year we had to maintain a fire in the Franklin stove, and it would be windy as a senator’s stump speec h. A few of these annual trips ago, the rest of t s he guys were out scrounging firewood while Doc an d I were bundled up at the cabin’s kitchen table, ou r feet stomping the plywood floor to keep the circu -lation going. Doc said, “Now is the winter of our discontent .” “Say what?” “Now is the winter of…

Bundle Up Garmin’s latest live-sonar ice-fishing bundle, Panoptix PS22-IF, has a unique bracket and rotator design that eliminates the need for a pole mount, making the bundle ultra-portable. Includes ECHOMAP UHD2 73sv touchscreen with keyed assist and offers both LiveVu and DownVu, showing live sonar images up to 100 feet in any direction. The transducer has removable lens for easy sonar optimization—$1,999.99, garmin.com Schaefer Outfitter Schaefer Outfitter, established in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in1982, has dressed generations of cowboys, farmers, and outdoors folks, including anglers, most recently also outfitting actors, including Kevin Costner, on the set of Yellowstone. Their Elkhorn Pullover is a quarter-zip sweater, incredibly soft and comfortable, perfect as a versatile mid-layer that combines warmth and style on the ice or open water—$155, schaeferoutfitter.com Popularity Plus The Ugly Stik…

Times have changed, but not that much. Forward-facing sonar is presently making a mark on our sport; but we still have to catch them when we finally get over them, if, indeed, we can, as we also see (literally) just how fishing pressure changes fish attitude, usually for the worse, often making fish move away—so much so that anglers now are recalculating strategies to intercept walleyes by setting up strategically, minimizing noise and using sort of old-school stealth presentations to trigger fish. As it was, so it still is for winter walleyes. Of course, power fishing or what has been called “ice trolling” is still in play, perhaps the more so at early ice, when fish haven’t been bothered by anglers for as much as a month before 4 inches…

I remember the first blue catfish I ever caught from the Potomac River—a stout 18-pounder that took a chunk of cut gizzard shad. The fish was powerful and had that light blue tint and bulging stomach so common to those Chesapeake cats. I thought it was a giant, but by the end of that day in April of 2009 my son Matt and I would catch numerous 40-pounders topped by a Matt’s 50-pounder that taped out at 47 inches. What a day! That was 15 years ago. Other big trips would follow as we fished the James River in Virginia numerous times with blues in the 30- to 60-pound class. Over the next decade the population structure of several Chesapeake blue catfish river systems would slowly shift from trophy to…

Offseason Checklist For many of us, there is no offseason. And that’s a good way to live. However, if you call the Ice Belt home, boat winterization is a real thing, and a sad thing at that. Fortunately, we have a season full of deer-hunting and ice-fishing memories in the works. Keep your chins up. As the countdown to spring fishing begins, the last thing you want when you pull your rig out of moth balls is for nothing to work—or worse yet, ruined batteries, missing gear, and mice. Nobody has time for that. The steps you take now to store and maintain your boat, graphs, and batteries assure a smooth relaunch next spring. For the sake of our discussion here, the following process applies to any type of battery—lead…

The Live Box Few discomforts compare to that which can be experienced on a steamy, still summer night in Minnesota’s lake country. What begins near sundown as a buzz high overhead can descend into a full-fledged assault during the dead of night. Cleaning fish while swatting a swarm of blood-thirsty mosquitoes and wiping sweat from your eyes using a hand dripping with slime is a situation that should be avoided at all costs. Long before our family cabin on Stalker Lake in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, had electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing, it had perhaps an even more important convenience. This amazing apparatus eliminates the need to clean fish at night. My grandparents had friends in Lincoln, Nebraska, who introduced them to Stalker Lake on a tent camping trip…