Tag Archives: Ice Fishing

If you have read any of my ice fishing “stuff” over the years you have probably heard me say, “Drill baby, drill”.  Fundamentally, when you are ice fishing, you are fishing a relatively small area right below your hole.  If you ain’t catching anything, likely there are not any fish there.  I do not care how good of a “stick” you think you are, you cannot catch ’em where they ain’t.  So, one of the keys to catching fish through …

Spreading the word on this: Note:  Saturday is in the classroom, bring your questions!  Then, hopefully you can also venture out Sunday morning for hands-on, on-the-ice application of what we spent Saturday afternoon talking about!  Be sure to pre-register, NO CHARGE! Hope to see you there, looking forward to it.  This clinic is always fun and guaranteed you will learn something too!

Ice fishing. Tis’ the season for it. I sure enjoy ice fishing but admittedly I don’t do much of it. I don’t quite have all the equipment needed for it. So, I guess you would consider me an amateur ice angler. Nevertheless, when there’s an invitation to go with seasoned veterans of the hard water fishing lifestyle for a day, you can bet that I will jump at the opportunity. Such was the case a couple years ago in January …

I was “out of the office” a little over a week during the holidays.  Man was it hard to go back. During that time I managed to cover a large portion of the state, dried a few off while I was at it. Christmas day was low-key.  I slipped out for few hours of fishing–on open water.  Caught a bunch of trout, none of the big ones I was hoping for, but certainly was not skunked. New Year’s Day, the …

We are getting closer, but depending on where you are we still are waiting for safe ice and ice fishing.  Might as well at least read about it!  One of my buddies here at Game & Parks, Jeff Kurrus, had a good ice-fishing story in the recent issue of Nebraskaland.  He even got the cover! Check it out, Tales and Tips From the Hardwater.

I am trying to patiently wait for ice.  I am about out of patience.  Pretty much every day I check, double-check the forecasts and long-range forecasts.  It ain’t looking good. I am ready.  The tree is up. The lights are hung. Even the missletoad. I am ready for ice! And this is all we get: “70 degrees in November”????  It is even worse in December!!!!! Don’t tell me how great this weather is.  I am losing patience. Cannot come soon …

Like many of you this time of year, I am counting the days. . . . No, silly, I am not counting the days until Christmas.  I am counting the days until the “New Year”.  But, remember, my “New Year” starts the minute I step on the ice for another season! Right now it ain’t looking good.  I have seen nothing to lead me to believe we are going to be on the ice anytime soon.  WARNING:  I will get …

My son and I do not get to fish together all the time.  Still it is nice knowing that even though we are separated by miles, we are on the water.  Maybe apart for now, but still on the water.  In fact it is interesting how often we are doing the same things even though we are fishing individually. For example, each winter we target big bluegills, 10-inches and larger, just like we get after muskies in open water.  At …

I got to looking through some old blog posts and discovered something interesting.  Seems as though in past years about this time, end of February, I have commented about people being in a foul mood and needing to lighten up!  I know that has sure been true again this week; lots of complaining.  I am telling you, people would be so much happier if they would just learn to ice-fish! So, this is for you.  In case you do not …

Work schedules for my kids converged recently and they both had days off at the same time.  They were going fishing. Of course I found a way to go with them! First, let me play my usual part of “old man” and say a thing or three about ice safety. . . . Our trip was at the beginning of the arctic outbreak.  We still found patches of unsafe ice.  Snow on the ice made that even more difficult to …