I am with you 100%, I could care less to ice fish and can’t wait for spring. I see you do pretty well chasing early season pike, do you ever catch them while spawning? I have taken two trips to the Dakota’s chasing pike as the ice was coming off and a good chunk of the pike were spawning and we had a real rough time getting biters on both trips. I do have some really cool pictures of pike spawning so it was not a lost effort.
Well I don’t mind a bit of ice-fishing for perch. But it’s not as trilling as fishing for big bass and pike. Actually I’ve caught quite a few pike that were obviously filled with spawn. One can tell they were bloated underneath and just behind the head. Fishing for ice-out pike is quite different then fishing for pike in the warmer months.
I use a very slow jerkbait technique with a ~5 second pause in between jerks at ice-out. Also I just barely reel up the slack, between the small jerks-twitches of the rod tip. Sometime I just see my line move slightly and set the hook. The fish generally don’t hit hard at ice-out and won’t move far to take a bait. Unlike a pike in May-June that will pound it from (3 to 5)’ away. Of course once hooked they don’t act sluggish. I use X-raps and husky jerks that mimic the areas bait fish, but every once in a while I throw a clown or firetiger color. Usually the natural colors work best, but sometimes they seem to like the flash of some crazy color.
From what I understand they don’t bite when actually spawning, but will take an occasional bait just prior to or after the spawn.
Hope that was useful.
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