North Central Minnesota Late-Ice Panfish

It’s no secret that the past few weeks of fishing across the ice-belt have been challenging to say the least. When James Holst and I headed north then to tackle a multitude of species, in various portions of the state, with tight schedules from locale to locale, I knew it would be an undertaking. Like all great adventures with even the best –laid plans, success often hinges on adaptation to said plans. This was the case when halfway through the trip we found a big gill bite of such quality and duration, that it held our attention for the rest of the trip.

With temps in the 40’s, and a mix of clouds and March-sun, this was late-ice panfishing at its best. That’s not to say they were easy to find. We ran nearly two tanks of gas through our 3hp Solos this trip trying to track these things down, and drilled for upwards of an hour with two augers just to mark a fish. Anyone who’s used these augers knows what an hour of drilling with two augers truly means! The good news is that once the fish were located, and more importantly, why they were located “there”, we were able to stay on them quite well.

The best fishing we had was on a large lake with several basins and rocky humps, but few locations to none actually held fish. Eventually, through the use of our flasher and camera, we found a great pocket in a basin that came from 40FOW up to 10 FOW with a small weedbed or two at the top. The structure was nice, but the weeds held the fish. Not just any weeds, and not dead and laid-down weeds, but patches of coontail with some green left in them. Without these, the gills would’ve been sitting ducks to the numerous pike and large bass we saw on camera…..of which we also caught plenty of. Seeing the fish on our Marcum flashers and camera in such a setting was truly a case study in predator/prey behavior under the ice. Early in the day, the gills would roam in loose schools, scattered throughout the water column. As the day wore on however, the bass especially started to show themselves more regularly in “waves” of thick red targets on the flashers. Not only would the gills scatter, but they’d bury themselves in whatever cover they could. It could take up to 15 minutes before these schools became comfortable and actively feeding again.

To capitalize on the bite while it was hot, we fished fast with Slender Spoons as much as we could. Especially for the larger panfish, 1/16oz. offerings in silver/blue and silver/chartreuse were the clear winners. As soon as these fish were less willing to chase, probably due to the high amount of predators in the area, you had to drop a Gill-Pill on their nose to get them to bite. I did well early on with the “zebra” white/black Gill-Pill in size 10, and James did better with the finicky fish with the more natural colored Frog pattern Gill-Pill, also in size 10. At least for myself, threading a spike on the hook was more productive than letting them dangle, at least when the fish were more close-mouthed throughout the day. Small adaptations to our presentation like this kept us on those fish all day, with literally a hundred or more fish in the 9-10” range iced.

Needless to say, this is quality fun for just about anybody, regardless of age or experience. No doubt, there are plenty of opportunities these next few weeks to chase fish long after the close of walleye season. Get out there!

Joel