Last week, the CIPS / FIPSed Congress in Dresden, Germany announced that the United States has won its bid to become the host country for the 2010 World Ice Fishing Championship.

WIFC organizers, in cooperation with The USA Ice Team, have chosen Rhinelander, Wisconsin as the official location of the 2010 WIFC event.

“I know everyone is up to the task and I am confident we will show them an unbelievably great time,” said Joel McDearmon, USA Ice Team Manager. “I certainly cannot claim all of the credit. Mike McNett was the mover and shaker in all this. Chris Ward, our resident computer uber genius, has made all of us proud with both the fishyspot and NAIFC websites. Brian Gaber made excellent graphics of the lodging, lakes, fish and bait that were specifically requested by the international committee for consideration. The USA Ice Team, who performed so well over in Poland so as to win at least grudging respect from the Europeans. You guys made a huge impact on what they thought they could expect - and you made it easy for them to throw away their incorrect assumptions and simply talk to us as fellow fishermen. I should also thank the great folks of Rhinelander for stepping up almost before we knew we were going to make the proposal. Finally, I want to thank all of you guys for your support and help throughout the season.”

A press conference will be held at The Rhinelander Chamber of Commerce at 2:30pm on Tuesday, April 28th.

Bob Esbensen

After fishing the December Championship then the series of qualifying tournaments there’s a certain void when it all ends. It’s not quite time for open water fishing. Even here in northern Illinois. In the last two years I’ve turned to the Ice Roads On Ice Clinics to fill the void. It’s the cutting edge ice fishing school designed for fishermen by fishermen. This year (2009) the ice road brought me and my cousin John to Lake Superior’s Chequamegon Bay in mid-March. We checked in on Friday afternoon to take in some educational seminars by Lake Superior guides, biologists and guest speaker Dave Genz. We were treated to a nice meal and made specific plans for the next day’s fishing. Saturday was an early start for a long ride out to the lake trout spots near the Apostle Islands. We fished all day in water 180 to 260 feet deep. We had expert instruction with nearly a 1:1 teacher to student ratio. We caught some nice fish but no giant lakers. We had a nice dinner waiting for us when we got back to the hotel.

Day two also started early but this time in much shallower water for rainbow trout near the mouths of the tributaries. At late ice the trout move to these areas on days that are warmer and the streams are flowing some. We were only in 4-6 feet of water, using automatic fishermen and jigging rods. Spawn bags and wax worms were effective. This area also produced a bonus brown trout. Later in the morning when the trout action slowed we moved to a smallmouth spot. You can’t visit the Chequamegon Bay area without sampling the smallmouth action. We fished in 22-24 feet of water using jig and minnow and jig and plastic. Fiskas and genz worms worked well. The group also caught bonus whitefish and coho salmon. John and I fished until sunset not wanting the ice season to come to an end. All of our fish were released except one lake trout.

Ice Roads is run by Jim Hudson of Hudson’s On The Spot Guide Service. Ice Roads On Ice Clinics provides me with the bridge I need to transition from the end of the ice competition to the beginning of the open water season. I don’t know where the “Road” will take me next year, but I’m sure there will be good fish and good people there.

Over the past year, USA Ice Team, in cooperation with the American Fishing Association (AFA), has worked diligently on their bid to host the 2010 World Ice Fishing Championship. This would be the seventh championship event in WIFC history, and its first time hosted in the United States. The selection committee meets this month to decide which country will earn the privilege of hosting this prestigious world-wide event.

Attached is the USA Proposal to FIPSed.

• Strategic Plan (.pdf)
• Bait (.pdf)
• Lakes (.pdf)
• Lodging (.pdf)

Brian Gaber

The NAIFC season is in the books. All the drama, competition, and camaraderie are packaged up with your ice gear for another off season. Some are heading to the spring Walleye Rivers, while others are turning their sights to Steelhead. There are some of us, though, that are getting the boats rigged up for the open water season of data collection. I am assembling all my favorite electronics, clearing data cards, and gathering up the maps necessary to unlock next year’s hot ice spots.

Waiting until there is ice on the lake to look for a good ice fishing spot, means only one thing, work. If you are in to drilling holes, this is how you operate. Winter lake exploration is possible, but it’s a vertical affair. The advent of the underwater camera makes this a bit easier, but you are still drilling down to move forward. This is the time to sharpen your skills searching, interpreting, and documenting. Get your boat out, clear out your GPS unit, and utilize your sonar unit.

The sonar unit lets you cover water. This is the horizontal component of your investigation. Eliminating unproductive water and really honing in on the “spots”. Understanding and interpreting your sonar unit is critical to efficiently picking apart a lake. Many people don’t understand the basics of the sonar, and therefore, have trouble using them. Let’s shed some light on this mystery.

The sonar is basically a computer device that utilizes a transducer to emit a pulsating sound wave at regular intervals. It hits objects in the water, analyzes them, and returns a signal. The way it works is it measures the length of time it takes for each signal to return. We already know how fast the signal travels through the water, so the time it takes to return a signal tell us how far away we are from the object. Bottom separation and picture detail are a function of the frequency and the number of pixels in the screen, or resolution. In both cases above, the higher the value the better the separation and picture.

There are also a couple of key interpretations that, when mastered, will help you a great deal. The hardness and softness of the bottom are interpreted by the unit. The thickness of the bottom return line will tell the relative harness. A thick line will represent a hard bottom, while a thin line will represent a soft bottom. An easy way to think about it is by imagining the strength of the signal. Take a golf ball and drop it on concrete, and then drop it on grass. The concrete will result in a stronger return, thus thicker. Look for the transitions. Another key interpretation element is judging the size of what you are looking at. A long line on the return does not necessarily indicate a large fish. The horizontal component of the return only represents the length of time the fish remains in the cone, or below the boat. You can have a bluegill below the boat for a long time, and the return will be a long thin line across the screen. The thickness determines the size of the fish. The thicker the return is, the bigger the fish is. The last thing to note, is that the first one eighth of an inch of the scrolling return picture is the current return, the rest is historical data.

One way to master these interpretations is to take out your underwater camera out and drop it down to look at the fish that you’re are marking, the bottom type you are looking at, or other items on the bottom. Make mental notes of what they looked like on your sonar return. Soon you will be on your way to maximizing time, in the exploration of the lake. Some of the very best anglers that I have fished with spent a great deal of their scouting time riding around the lake graphing or viewing their sonar units. Record coordinates of key structural elements and transitions. Take notes about them. You’ll thank yourself when the water is hard and the search slows.

John Fishing in 3-D

Have you ever been sitting right next to someone without one single bite, while he just hammers the fish one after another?? You try everything but the kitchen sink and you would try that too if you could get it down the hole. You cut holes around him. Nothing. You watch his technique and copy it. Nothing. You put on the same bait. Nothing. You think, man he must just have the mother load sitting right under his hole. Well, almost.

Most likely, that guy catching the fish was using the 3-D world view of the fish whether he knew it or not.

Fishermen often think of the under water world in 1 or 2-D at best. We use a flasher or graph or look down the hole. We are not looking at the world as the fish sees it. We see it like a photo or paper map. Now I am not suggesting that we need to suit up and go for a swim under the ice, but that would be pretty cool. However, I do believe we need to try to think about how and what a fish can or can’t see.

Panfish or bait fish generally travel, feed, and rest based primarily on some form of cover/structure. How tight they hold is often determined by how low on the food chain they are. Predators know all this. They position themselves to feed based on how high they are in the food chain and the tactical advantage they have over their prey. Do you get the picture? It is a visual game of cat and mouse. So the lower on the food chain you are, the more concealed you need to be. Fish have to chose the safest or the “best path” to get from point A to B.

Now, I’ll also add that many fish chose the same ‘best path’ to move from one area to the next. These paths are actually like run ways that a deer uses in the woods and for precisely the same reasons; cover and ease of movement. Fish use open pockets in the weeds like a deer uses meadows. They are gathering places and places to feed. Here fish count on numbers of eyes to alert them of approaching danger. Thick areas of weed or brush for fish are like heavy cover to any woodland animal, they offer increased security in trying times. And did you ever just see a big buck just lay down in a slight depression out in the middle of large field when the pressure is bad? Just like the main basin fish did on Boom lake at nationals this year. I think you get the big picture here, right? Most people understand and acknowledge all this info about deer and other animals because we live on the same plane. We see things the exact same way, from the same perspective, 3-D. But for most, the underwater world is still viewed as if it were 2-D, like a painting.

Has your paradigm shifted yet? I’ll go farther. You can have paths and pockets and intersections of paths at any depth in the water column. Some paths are wide, some narrow, some for evening use, some midday, etc. Some are like a super highway. Picture a narrow mid depth bar, covered with coontail that gently slopes into a huge blood worm filled basin, connecting a huge sparsely weeded flat. You get the picture now? NO. Still having trouble visualizing. That’s OK. We have under water camera’s. You can actually see things from the fish’s perspective. The other thing you can do that’s pretty simple, but only practical as to the extent of water clarity, is to look under the ice through your hole. I will often look as far to the sides of my hole as I can. I look for pockets, clumps of weeds, edges etc.

I recently heard the underwater camera referred to as a “toy” at an ice fishing seminar. Trust me, it’s not a toy. If you really want to know WHY, drop a camera down. Seeing, is truly understanding.

I’ll give you an example of another type of structure in the 3-D world of fish; Water Clarity. That’s right, dirty water is like hard structure to a fish. I was fishing in Iowa several yrs ago looking for bluegills. I drilled a series of holes down a weedy slope. The water on top of the slope was like a caramel mocha late’, zero visibility. The water at the base, 10′ deeper was crystal clear, but there were no fish down there. When I’d dropped a jig into the dirty water, I’d see fish racing in on my flasher to slam the bait as soon as it got within 1′ of the bottom. It was like magic. Two inches higher in the water column and nothing. I was amazed. How could those fish see my jig in that dirty water to race in to hit it? I really wanted to watch them and see, so I dropped the camera. I was utterly amazed. The water within 1′ of the bottom was absolutely gin clear. The fish were using that blanket of cloudy water and just hammering my baits under it’s protective canopy. I’ve seen that many times since then, but not nearly as dramatically.

Here’s another example; snow built up along a pressure ridge creates a shadow that penetrates into the water column as far as the light reaches. This becomes a natural edge for the fish to follow. If it connects two key pieces of structure or weed beds, it can become a highway too.

One last example. Have you ever fished a crib? You know, a man made piece of structure, placed on the bottom to provide cover for fish. Many times they are placed on key structural bottom locations, like an inside bend or point. That makes them really attractive for fish. But if you’re going to get those fish out, you have to fish in 3-D. Many times those fish won’t leave the security of their crib to hit a bait, no matter how tasty it looks. At a tournament in WI this season, my partner and I used a combination of camera’s and flashers to thread our jigs through the slats on a tightly built crib to secure our top 10 finish and qualify for nationals. The fish were so spooked from all the traffic during the prefish week, that dropping the camera parallel to the crib, just pushed the fish in deeper. So we, used our flashers to position our depth when fishing along side or inside the structure and down viewed with the cameras to thread our jigs deep inside. The jigs had to be right on the money or the fish just wouldn’t hit them. If your jig was off the mark by inches, it would sit there unmolested for eternity.

So next time that guy sitting next you is pounding fish, try to envision what the 3-d world below looks like. Is he on an edge, in a pocket, a fish super highway? It will help you understand and catch more fish.

Nice Results

Just like pros of the MLB, the pros of the NAIFC have their “tricks-of-the-trade” as well. One of those tricks is common to both sports. It is the CHANGE UP and both have the similarity of presentation. In baseball, the wrong presentation means a home run and that’s a bad thing. In the NAIFC, the right presentation means a home run and that’s a good thing.

After the last two legs of the circuit, Lake Delevan and Channel Lake, I couldn’t help but wonder what the “phenom phishing” team of Bauer and Erath did so differently that the other teams didn’t do to take back to back wins in the NAIFC… which by the way doesn’t happen that often. So after catching up with them at Channel Lake weigh-ins this is what I was so politely reminded about… change it up!

The change up is nothing new to me. It is something that I have heard for many years in the ice fishing community. I know what it means and I know when to throw it so to speak. For those of you that do not, let me explain it a little bit. The change up simply means to change your bait or your presentation. The B & E connection did this extremely well on both lakes and it paid off for them. They would simply fish a series of holes, as most do, hole hopping, and then retie a new jig/bait and the hit those holes again.

The change up can also mean to change your presentation of the same jig by fishing it differently. If you fish your bait on the bottom of the water column, then fish the top as well. If you swim your bait from the bottom up, then try swimming it from the top down.

It was a humbling, yet a good reminder, to have this conversation. I have learned many things from this deadly duo of ice fishers over the years and am proud to call them friends, even when they knock my boots off with a nine pound plus bucket-o-slabs. One other thing that was mentioned by this tandem of tricksters, was confidence. You must have confidence in what you are using and what you are doing. That was evident of them at Channel seeing how they were plowing snow on Saturday instead of pre-fishing.

Howard the Duck

Joe Pikulski and Myron Gilbert

Written BY ERIC SHARP • FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER • January 1, 2009

When the North American Ice Fishing Championships was held at Boom Lake, Wisconsin, 42 out of the 80 two-angler teams caught a limit of 32 fish over two days. So what did Michigan anglers Joe Pikulski and Myron Gilbert do differently to win the event by a mere 1 3/4 ounces?
“When we fish a hole, we take the first two, three fish then move to the next one,” said Gilbert, a Brooklyn resident who, in the summer, fishes for Lake Erie walleyes out of Luna Pier and Lake Michigan salmon out of Ludington aboard his charter boat, Catchin’.

“It doesn’t matter if we’re still getting fish — the first two or three are always the biggest and strongest, so once you’ve got them, you go to the next hole.”

Not that the next hole may be very far away. Gilbert said he and his partner usually drilled 300 to 350 holes during a five-hour, one-day tournament, spacing them across the ice according to the water clarity.

“It depends on how far away a fish can see your bait,” Gilbert said. “If the fish can see your bait 5 feet away, you drill the holes 10 feet apart. If they can see the bait 15 feet away, drill the holes 30 feet apart. By doing that you can cover a lot of water, and you’ll get the biggest, most aggressive fish.”

Gilbert and Pikulski, who in the summer runs a charter boat called Temptation, are among four teams of anglers who will be featured in the new “Ice Men” cable TV show that debuts on The Sportsman Channel this month. It follows the teams through several tournaments and shows the techniques they use to catch fish under conditions both good and bad.

Teams from Michigan took five of the top 10 places at the North American championships, and Gilbert thinks that’s because ice fishing is tougher here than in many of the richer lakes in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

“We usually have to work a lot harder to catch fish, and I think it makes us better fishermen,” he said.

That dedication also earned Gilbert and Pikulski sponsorship from Suzuki (four wheelers), Ice Gator power augers, Marcum electronics, Fiska Jigs and Little Adam ice tails.

One of the “Ice Men” shows will be made at Devil’s Lake in southern Michigan during the North American Ice Fishing Circuit event held there Feb. 1. But even though these are home waters, Gilbert said he and Pikulski still would have to spend most of their time locating fish big enough to win.

“Catching fish is easy. If the fish are there, I can always catch them,” Gilbert said. “It’s finding them that can be difficult. You have to look at each body of water and figure out where the biggest fish will be at that time.

“The first thing to do is see where other people have been fishing. That’s usually where the fish are. But they’re not always the fish you want, and don’t stay there long if you don’t catch fish. At Boom Lake, people were fishing around (underwater) cribs, because that’s where they caught bluegills and crappies last fall. But when we put an underwater TV camera down, all we could see were the cribs.

“I’m not fishing for cribs. I’m fishing for bluegills and crappies. So we left everyone else and moved out and found the fish in 24 feet of water. The cribs were in 20 feet. What you have to do is break the lake down to manageable portions. Even if you look on a place and don’t find fish, it tells you something. It tells you not to waste your time on other parts of the lake that are like that one.”

Teams entered in NAIFC events fish for designated species, usually bluegills, sunfish, crappies and perch, with a designated limit for each species each day. At Boom Lake it was eight fish of each species.

Anglers can use a portable ice shanty but are limited to one rod at a time. There are severe penalties for being over the limit.

Teams that have too many fish see their biggest fish removed from the pile and the weight of those fish subtracted from the total weight of their remaining fish.

“We caught all the bluegill we needed in an hour, but in that lake, an 8-incher was a big bluegill. Our biggest was 4 1/2 . What you needed to do was find big crappie, fish that went around a pound,” Gilbert said.

He said he and Pikulski usually stayed at each hole for about a minute, just long enough to either catch any active fish or decide that the hole wasn’t worth fishing.

“We used the TV camera some, but mostly to see what kind of area you’re fishing rather than looking for fish. We use a graph to locate the fish, but a TV camera is handy because if you can see that it looks like a place you didn’t catch fish in before, you can stop wasting time,” he said. “The camera can also show you if the fish are hanging out on the edges of the weeds or in the middle, or if they’re scattered around in open water.

“In deeper water, 30-35 feet, the cone of the (graph) transducer is so wide that you’ll see any fish under you. Sometimes in deep water we won’t even drop a bait in the hole if we don’t see what we want on the graph. We’re electronic fishermen. But in shallow water, the cone is so narrow we usually fish every hole. But if I don’t see a fish looking at the bait in 30 seconds or so, we move.”

Gilbert’s favorite lure for bluegills is an orange jig with a waxworm that he hooks at one end before popping the body to produce what he calls a gummy worm.

For crappies he likes the same jig with a minnow.

“I like it when the fish are spread out over a big area, a half mile or so. That way, a guy sitting on one hole can’t get lucky and take the lion’s share,” he said.

The Godfather.....Dave Genz

In this week’s episode of Ice Men TV on Sportsman Channel, Mr. Ice Fishing himself, Dave Genz, makes a featured appearance, as the story of the modern ice fishing revolution is woven as a backdrop against the first qualifying tournament of 2009, near Osakis, Minnesota.
“Dave Genz is the man we all look up to,” says Mike McNett, Tournament Director of North American Ice Fishing Circuit (NAIFC). “As we look around on the ice and see the latest equipment and watch how the best fishermen fish, Dave had a hand in every piece of it.”
Viewers will get the real story behind how the ice fishing revolution began, direct from the man who created it, along with drama and tension as camera crews follow two-man teams in NAIFC competition. Ice Men Reality TV is the first behind-the-scenes look at high level competition in the growing sport of ice fishing. The same two-man teams are featured on each week’s show, giving viewers a chance to get to know them as the characters they are.
The teams are diverse, but all fiercely competitive, and the ‘stuff’ that happens in extreme cold makes for fascinating viewing. Tune in on the Sportsman Channel to catch “Snotsickles and Bad Gas” Jan. 27 at 10:30 p.m. Central Standard Time. The episode will also air Jan. 28 at 5 p.m. and Jan. 31 at 7 a.m. All times are CST.
“A lot happens this week,” said McNett, “including having one of our teams break up and announce they are going home. We have to act fast to keep it all together. Plus, the extreme cold puts everybody’s fishing and equipment to the ultimate test. It’s worth watching.”
Note: Ice Men airs every week on Sportsman Channel through March 28, 2009. All episodes will also air Sept. 29 - Dec. 26, 2009. For more on the highest level of ice fishing competition, go to www.naifc.com. For information on Sportsman Channel, go to www.thesportsmanchannel.com.

On a day when only the hardiest winter anglers would fish outside, Team True Blue pro Duff Peddycoart and his partner Mitch Thies won the NAIFC season opener on Minnesota’s Lake Osakis.

The first NAIFC qualifier for 2009 was held Sunday, Jan. 4 on this renowned panfish lake near Alexandria. After relatively milder weather during practice, high pressure, high skies and a cold snap arrived for tournament day. Actual air temperatures were about 15 below zero, with wind chills well below that, forcing many competitors to fish inside Fish Traps much of the day.

How Duff went about the process of locating fish and catching them (as always) is the real story, the one that everybody who wants to refine their own personal fishing style is interested in. The lessons learned in high level competition almost always translate into great nuggets of information.

That is definitely the case here.

Duff is known as a crappie guy. He seems to have magical powers when it comes to locating and triggering nice crappies, and after the tournament we received an inquiry from a True Blue forum member (Cody Tabbert) who also fished the event.

Cody wanted to ask Duff where he searched for crappies on Lake Osakis, and why he picked those areas. And what changes he made based on the weather change, if any.

So here, in answer to Cody’s questions, is a detailed explanation of how Duff approached this midwinter crappie situation. The results were impressive, as Duff and Mitch set a tournament record of 10.21 pounds for 8 crappies and 8 sunfish, including Duff’s 1.62-pound crappie, which won big fish honors.

Midwinter Crappie Location

First things first. We always say you can’t catch fish if you can’t find ‘em. Duff understands the fundamentals of winter crappie location well. Here is how he went about the search on Osakis, which is a classic natural lake featuring a wide variety of depths and plenty of prominent structural elements.
His first goal, as is often the case with Duff, was to get away from the commotion at community spots. By midwinter, clusters of permanent shacks and portable shelters can be found at known fish-producing areas. We often say, and it’s true, that you can join the group and catch fish, and this remains a good idea if your main goal is to catch some and you don’t worry about winning a tournament.

But Duff was in the competition to win it, so he was determined to find unpressured fish. “I fish away from the crowd,” he said afterward. “I get away from the houses and the other people.” As Dave Genz always says, any pod of fish will feature only so many biters, so when numerous anglers are ’sharing’ fish, which is a common saying out there, it can get tough to coax bites after the crowd works the fish over. That, and the commotion created by comings and goings and hole drillings, has a way of causing fish to slide to the side, and become increasingly finicky. But you hear this advice all the time. Get away from the crowd. What good does it do to hear that advice if you don’t know where to go once you leave the crowd behind, right?

Here is Duff’s approach to finding midwinter crappies: In most lakes, crappies have vacated the shallow weeds, even the deep weed edges, by this period. At early ice, you might find crappies and sunfish in good weeds, but these areas do not usually produce all winter long, if the ice remains for more than about a month. So Duff looks carefully at the contour map, and notes where deep water areas are in relation to where good weed growth occurs.

“Crappies like to be away from everything,” Duff tell us, and here’s what he means by that.
“I look around in the middle of the lake,” he says. “When I look at the map, I might find a big area that’s 20 or 30 feet deep, or maybe 40 feet.”

Another interruption here: notice that he did not say 60, 70, 80 feet. Lake Osakis has nosebleed basins like that, but Duff would not focus on such extreme depths when looking for crappies. It is the mid-level depths that should catch your attention when scanning contour maps.

“The best place to start (looking) is in the middle of that (mid-level basin area),” says Duff. (Remember that he said midwinter crappies like to be away from everything. But here is where Duff refines his advice, revealing that, while he starts searching in the middle of likely deep-water areas, he has one eye on the direction of those productive shallow weeds or other cover.) “Start in the middle (in this case, his search area was a big bay),” says Duff, “but work toward where any nearby weeds would come up. In the spring, and early summer, crappies would be in those weeds.”

Duff also looks for structural elements not connected to the shoreline, such as humps (large humps are sometimes called ’sunken islands’ which is a funny term, because they were probably never islands that sunk). Anyway, these structural elements can attract life, including midwinter crappies, but the crappies are likely to be away from those structures, too, rather than right up on them. “If you can find a hump,” says Duff, “go on the outskirts of it, toward the deeper water, and start looking there.”

Plenty of Hole Drilling

The ‘looking’ is where modern mobile ice anglers get their reputation. The reason there are unpressured pods of midwinter crappies, and sunfish, is that it usually takes time and effort to find them. Duff was using the latest LakeMaster chip in his GPS to put himself accurately over likely areas, but no GPS chip is going to tell you where the crappies are right now! It’s up to you to drill holes and look down every hole to see if fish are present.

Duff is a drilling man, one of those guys who fires up his StrikeMaster auger and cuts and cuts. He makes it look effortless, and the tools are so much better than they used to be, but it does take more effort than setting up camp over one set of holes. His work typically results in fish discoveries, especially when teaming up with friends. In this case, he and partner Mitch were both drilling plenty of holes in practice, taking turns coming behind the other with the Vexilar, putting the transducer into every hole. You’re looking for a ‘Christmas Tree’, a slang term for one of those holes where flickers of fish signals come and go at numerous depths– or where the screen lights up bright and stays that way. When you see that, you can’t get the bait down there fast enough as your heart races wondering what they are and how active they might be.

In this case, as Duff and Mitch searched across a big bay in about 18 - 22 feet, most of the crappies were tight to bottom. That complicated the matter of seeing them on the Vexilar, although, as Duff points out, “if you’re used to watching the Vexilar, you’re looking for that fluttering bottom signal.”
What he means: the bottom signal on a Vexilar is often a well-defined, unmoving line. But if fish are close to bottom or right on it, you will often see a fuzzy bottom signal that seems to dither, or vibrate, almost as if it’s rising up and settling back down. Because that was the case on Osakis during practice for this tournament, Duff and Mitch fished many holes, quickly dropping a Frostee Jigging Spoon or Fat Boy, baited with maggots, to see if fish would rise up to it. “You don’t spend much time in any hole,” stressed Duff. “You have a lot of ground to cover, so you can’t sit there if no fish show up.” Particularly true during the daylight hours, another notion that Genz talks about constantly. Whereas fish can be on the move and actively looking for something to eat during the prime times of sunrise and sunset, most crappies and sunfish sit for extended periods during the day. “The whole key,” says Duff, “is to drill many holes. You could be 30 feet away from a big group of crappies, but if you don’t move 30 feet toward them and drill another hole, you won’t find them. The more holes you drill, the more fish you’re gonna find.”

So that’s how it went during practice, like it does every day for Duff. Drill, drill, drill, look, look, look, drop a jig down whenever you’re not sure. Eventually, fish are found. Then, you see whether they’re the ones you’re looking for. “On Friday and Saturday (the two days before Sunday’s tournament), we caught gorgeous fish,” said Duff. “The sunfish were super nice, and so were the crappies. I had all our places marked out. We knew where we were going to fish in the tournament.” Specific areas were saved onto the GPS as waypoints, so the team could easily find them and drill holes right over their most productive practice spots.

Tournament Day Strategy

As usual on the day of a tournament, Sunday brought changes the team had to adapt to.
For one thing, slush. Plenty of snow on top of the ice (a common ingredient in many Ice Belt states this winter) creates a slush problem. Drilling holes brought water gushing to the surface, because of the pressure being applied by the snow, and complicated the slushy conditions. That made it a bad idea to park the team’s snowmobile close to those holes, because the cold weather would freeze everything badly. “Fishing in the slush was not a good idea,” was how Genz put it.

So, adapting to the realities, Duff elected to “go between the spots I had marked on the GPS, and we drilled on drier ground and found some fish by doing that. We punched as many holes as we could.”
The extreme cold complicated the fishing process also, evidenced by Duff spilling his maggots onto the ice at the first hole and having them freeze solid instantly. He couldn’t even reach down and pick them up in time to save them! Luckily, ever the Boy Scout, Duff had a second Bait Puck loaded with maggots on an inside pocket of his Ice Armor suit, and that saved the day.

The weather did not result in a big location shift by the fish. They were still there, but it took a more refined presentation to get them to bite.

Presentation Details

Here’s another series of fine points that separate great anglers from the rest of us: Duff and Mitch had methodically tested many presentations during practice. After finding workable pods of fish, Duff would work his way through numerous rods, which he had pre-rigged with different color jigs.
He tried many colors, and varying numbers of maggots, and various plastic tails. “You have to see what they want, and how they want it,” he says, advice that you often hear. But Duff means business in this regard every time out, and by tournament day he had noted that these fish seemed to like chartreuse or gold jigs best. He and Mitch settled on Frostee Jigging Spoons and Fat Boys, and the same colors held on tournament day. But they had to slow down the presentation a bit to get the fish to commit.

Follow the Moving Pod

If you’ve made it this far, a real nugget as a reward. When Duff hooks each fish, as he fights it toward the surface, he pays close attention to the dominant direction the fish tries to go. He believes that gives away the location of “his buddies” and helps you track the main group of fish. “When you reel a fish up,” says Duff, “watch to see if it’s pulling to the right, or left, or trying to go straight ahead. That tells you to go that way (with your next series of holes). I want to know where that fish is trying to get back to.”

Genz often says it’s a collection of little things that lead to consistent success in fishing. As you can see, Duff works hard at ice fishing, because he loves the sport and wants to catch fish every time out. Even when the conditions are cold and difficult, he relies on Ice Armor boots and suits and gloves and hats to let him remain super mobile. After Duff settles over a good pod of fish, he loves to go into the Fish Trap and turn the heater on for a while. But he’s rarely in one place for long, because to keep catching fish, he believes in moving whenever the action slows down. “Drill as many holes as it takes to find some fish,” he says, “and then figure out what it takes to catch those fish.” It’s not rocket science, but it is modern ice fishing, as practiced by one of the best in the business.

Notes: Duff Peddycoart was not the only Team True Blue pro who did well in this event. Don Cox, who lives out in the Nebraska Sandhills, proved again that the Genz system works wherever you go. Cox and longtime partner Dave Fehlhafer finished second… we’ll hear more on midwinter fishing from Don Cox soon…

Also, the amazing team of Joe Pikulski and Myron Gilbert, who won the Clam NAIFC Team of the Year title in ‘07-’08, continued its consistent string of success by finishing third. Myron and Joe, a featured team on the new reality TV series, Ice Men, which airs on the Sportsman Channel, wear the Clam colors on the circuit…

Also, Team True Blue pro Jim Kusuda, who gives freely of his practice time to teach kids’ clinics, had another impressive finish as well… he and longtime partner Terry Rogers finished in 8th place at Osakis…

And how about the young team of Tristen and Zack Cox… two of Don’s sons also made the pilgrimage from Mullen, Nebraska, finishing 18th, ahead of many very good teams!

Product reviews: Duff came off the brutal and slushy ice singing the praises of the new Ice Armor Boots. “I was walking through slush the whole time,” he said, “but my feet were completely dry all day. They were awesome.”

Duff was also impressed with prototype rods he was testing, something you’ll hear more about in the coming months. In the deep water, during a tentative bite, he says, is where you separate great rods from the ones that just can’t signal subtle bites. “I loved the action,” said Duff, “and they had excellent feel.”

To finish, he reiterated something we have all come to know: even in extreme conditions, Vexilar flashers perform flawlessly. “I half expected to hear the thing creaking out there,” said Duff, “but I turned it on and it whirred away like it always does. Nothing stops those things.”

More tournament info… for complete details on this and upcoming NAIFC events, go to naifc.com.

strandoutdoors@mac.com
© 2008 by Mark Strand