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A Trick for keeping your holes open
My Father showed me this years ago and I had forgot about it till I saw it on a website somewhere last year.
Take a large coffee can and drill a ¼ inch hole near the bottom of the can. Take 8 feet of ¼ inch copper tubing and stick about 8 inches out of the hole in the can and wrap the tubing around and around the inside of the can with the last foot or so sticking out the top, aiming down.
Put in a couple of pieces of self-starting charcoal in the can and light them. Set the can next to your hole, with the lower end of the tube in the water. The heat from the charcoal will suck up the water, heat it and spit it back into the water from the top tube, keeping your hole ice-free no matter how cold it gets and the charcoal will burn for hours.
-Ted Lariviere, Rockland
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Walleye-ing! or is that Walleyeing?
Ice fishing for walleye is very popular at Petrie Island. They're fun to catch and great eating. If you're sitting around waiting for your tip-up to go into action, chances are you'll never see a walleye. Ya gotta get up off your chair and head out past where all the huts are and where the ice is alot thinner. The drop-off at the end of Baitshop Bay offers some excellent walleye fishing.
Walleyes are light sensitive and tend to bite best around dawn and dusk. They also tend to bite the best at first ice. Like in summer, walleyes are best caught using jigs with waxworms, maggots, minnows or plastic. Try different styles of jigging, start aggressive and work your way down to subtle taps. After observing the jig for a while they usually hit when the jig is going down. Walleyes usually travel in schools, so if you catch one you'll probably catch more.
-Marcel Laurendeau, Orleans
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Catch More Northern Pike...because they typically seek out high oxygen levels
Northern pike have an amazing capacity for finding water with the richest quantity of oxygen. It doesn’t matter if they are in a lake or river, pike will consistently seek out water with the most plentiful oxygen. These are the locations you need to find in order to catch fish.
Think about the terrific weed beds that form during the spring and summer months. These locations are often havens for large and plentiful northern pike. But when the ice forms, these great summer-time locations can actually drive pike to seek out different waters.
The reason? As the underwater foliage decomposes over the winter it sucks oxygen out of the water. As the oxygen level decreases the pike are driven to seek out different locations. While ice fishing for pike you need to be attuned to this fact.
So where does one find these oxygen rich locations? Well, it is actually fairly straight forward. Those that have the most success pike fishing know that the oxygen levels are higher where a creek or river empties into a lake. As the fresh water enters the lake or reservoir it drives the oxygen content up in these locations. Find the oxygen and you will find the fish.
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Worms, minnows or jigs? What bait should I use?
Everyone has their favourite bait to use while fishing. Typically while using tip-ups it's live bait like minnows. They're active and offer a tempting meal for any pike in the area. Worms are a popular second choice and attract many bottom feeders like sturgeon and cats.
Least popular but still excellent is jigging with plastic jigs, waxworms, maggots and minnows. This is an excellent method for catching species of all kinds under the ice.
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