Panfish Report – Jan. Fox Lake

I had a rare opportunity to have Friday all to myself. With no obligations, I knew I had to take full advantage of getting on the ice, since my days to fish over the next few weeks will be very limited.
I pack my gear and decided to hit Fox Lake again for gills, and toss in a tip-up or two for some pike. The weather conditions were much less than desirable. We had variable winds, and the leading edge of a front slowly moving through. By mid day, I had been through East winds, North winds, West winds, cloudy, sunny, and eventually snow. Typical WI conditions: ” If you don’t like the weather, just wait 15 minutes and it will change”, and that it did.

I targeted a large semi-weedy flat with subtle depth changes ranging 4 to 6 fow. Arriving at 6:15 am on the ice, I had a lot of room all to myself. Knowing this lake is very busy, and sees a lot of vehicle traffic, I positioned myself in an area between permanent shacks and away from the general “road”. That paid dividends with the quality of pike I encountered with the tip-ups. (WI. it is legal to fish 3 lines) I kept the pike fishing as simple as I could. The biggest bait that I could find, quick strike rigs for fast hook sets, and used their placement as my “territory” markers. Running 6” to 7” shiners, I iced a 31-1/2”, 34”, and a 32”. My adrenaline had been raised by the one and only pike I lost that day. The first flag of the morning was a monster compared to the 3 that I iced. After multiple times of long runs and massive head shakes, I finally got that beast to start its head up an 8” hole. To my surprise and shock, it opened its mouth and the entire hole was white and teeth. As soon as I saw my tiny treble hook barely in the skin of the lower jaw, it unbuttoned. I ran my arm down the hole in a foolish attempted to grab it. About 14” of a soaked arm only resulted in pushing the fish back down the hole. Naturally I would have loved to get a picture of that iced beast, but never the less, an awesome memory of seeing that huge head in the hole. Creates the lure of why we keep going back. All pike were released!

However, my primary objective was to get a couple meals of gills, and to just harvest the most mature fish. The morning bite was a struggle in addition to the typical lows we see in January. It didn’t take much hole hopping to see I was above the fish. Now icing some keepers, was at first giving me a head ache.

After making the rounds of about a dozen holes, I only had 2 gills that went about 8”. The rest were micro-chip sized and many would look great in an aquarium. I took a few minutes to clear out the ice on my tip-ups and thought about the common elements of the two keepers I caught. In both cases, I had slack line from the moment I lowered the gill-pill down the hole. I grabbed my Vex, and studied it closely while I was sitting over a hole. I noticed two distinct areas fish were passing by the hole. I would get a very quick large mark just below the ice to about ½ way down. The rest of the water column was sporadic marks and a lot more flickering. As soon as I saw another flash just inches below the hole, I dropped in my jig, and very slowly “pulsed” a slow fall. THUMP! Immediately when the jig was about 10” below the ice and still, a nice quality gill sucked in my offering. This was the pattern for the entire day. I forfeited catching numbers of tiny gills and risking mortality to the immature fish.

For this day, success came from understanding the difference of fish placement in the water column. Fishing blindly, I would have continued to fish the bottom ½ of the water column for the entire day resulting in catching at least a hundred tiny gills. I reduced my catch to a much more desirable ratio by only fishing the segment of the column that had the mature fish. I’m sure I would have caught a few keepers by pounding the bottom, but that would have just kept my hands wet and frozen.

As evening began to set in, the gill bite had really shut down. But in the same portion of the water column as earlier, the old Vex began to light up like a Christmas Tree. It took a little trial and error to get a color dialed in. But the Crappies were moving across the tops of the weeds like the snow blowing across the top of the ice. I iced a few and completed what I wanted for a limit of panfish. More importantly, I think I stumbled onto the next pattern I want to identify on Fox Lake.