Ice Fishing Livewell

To start with, I now rarely keep fish that I do not plan on eating fresh that same evening. However, on the rare occasions that I do have intentions of keeping fish, I cannot stand to clean frozen ones…which brings me to the question: Have any of you tried the sleeve style “livewell” for ice fishing before? If so how does it work? The ones I’ve seen promoted online are made of blue plastic and supposedly will fit an 8″ hole.

I do not like lugging a cooler, or bucket to add water to, or anything like that out onto the ice. I stay extremely mobile in a 1 man flip over and fish a lot of river water with ice generally well under a foot. (Drilling a hole and cracking the bottom won’t suffice).

Chain link stringer. Clip the fish onto it and let it down a hole. We’ve kept em for almost 24 hours before doing that, they just sit below the ice.

I just bought one that was made by Clam. I have only used it twice, seemed to work really good. The fish stayed alive in it and in my wheel house it didn’t freeze in the hole, I don’t know your set up but pretty sure it would need to be in a house or might have freeze in issues. IT has a zipper on the side to make getting the fish out a little easier. Good luck

When Bruce Maasher developed the ice well he was doing some thinking. I have a couple of these that I’ve had for years and use them a ton during the open water season. Any boat without a livewell could benefit with one of these…kayak, canoe, float tube even. I originally got one for ice and it worked great so I got another larger one.

I haven’t any experience with what clam has. Bruce sold his business to clam a couple years back so I’s assume that they’re a decent product. I’ve used mine to death and they’re still as good as new.

I’ve made livewells in a hub by drilling a few holes side by side that don’t penetrate all the way through the ice.

A few issues are:

Having space for it (I usually fish alone in a hub with plenty of room).

Getting water in it. You can dump from a minnow bucket, scoop out of a hole, or I’ll usually run my heater next to it and it’ll fill on its own.

It works great during late ice, when it’s still good thick ice but starting to melt on top.

Snow is a great insulator. When I don’t want my fish frozen during a trip I will layer fish and snow in a 5 gal bucket. Does work well, if there is snow.

How about this “livewell” more specifically? Any thoughts or reviews?

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I have the clam sleeve one. Works well have nothing bad to say about it. Been using it for 2 years.

If I’m keeping fish I really like bringing a cooler with ice. I bleed my fish right in the cooler. Keeps blood of the lake ice. The fish don’t freeze. I saw this years ago on an episode of infisherman. Stange was in Ontario catching whitefish. He talked about how he bleeds the fish and puts them on ice in the cooler. He said the fish don’t freeze. Tried it out and Sure enough fish didn’t freeze.

Will the clam sleeve keep shiners or will they escape?

Chip one out of the ice with a spud…. Chip out a basin then pop a hole in the bottom. It will fill up. Natural livewell.

Then put some markers in it when you leave.

Will fire clam sleeve keep shiners or will they escape?

Yes. the holes are small enough to keep shiners. I would have to look cause it might even hold smaller minnows too.