Getting Ready for Ice Fishing: What you Should Know

Ice Fishing Readiness- What You Should Be Doing Now to Be Ready

Few things in the outdoors get my heart pumping and turn me into a little kid again like a ‘christmas tree’ vexilar bottom eruption of Devils Lake Jumbo Perch in 35 feet of water.  The hook set, reel in, unhook, rebait, drop as fast as you can sequence is exhilarating.  You gotta keep that feeding frenzy school interested and occupied to keep them under you, at times we will have 3 or 4 rods baited and ready so we can be quicker, other times we rig 3 slip-bobber rods and keep one for jigging to keep the interest as we are reeling one in.  Sometimes, on the Big Devil, the action is so hot you don’t get a chance to ever put any of the bobber rods back down once you’ve caught one on it.

If you are ever lucky enough to find a white bass/perch/crappie school feeding under you, like we did 2 winters ago, look out.  Mayhem is the only word I can think of to describe it.  We are constantly, constantly chasing that rush.  Everyday on the hard water we are looking for that ‘perfect storm’.  Sometimes we are off on location, sometimes we are off on timing, and sometimes we are just OFF.

Perch fishing on Devils Lake’s Hard Water is or can be an exercise in pure numbers.  As I have said before, I am not a great fisherman, but if you throw enough darts at the dart board, eventually you will hit the bullseye a couple times.  Same goes for ice fishing Devils Lake.  If we drill enough holes, in probable perch habitiat, eventually, odds are we are gonna hit the bullseye.

I log most of my holes.  The most I have ever drilled in 1 day is just under 200.  Sometimes you hit the jackpot on hole 7, sometimes on that 200th hole, and some days you never do dial them in.  That is the rush we chase though, target that fresh school and stay on them for 3 days to a week and then on to the next spot and the next Yukon Gold Rush of Devils Lake Super Mega Jumbos.

Flying blind and just randomly drilling wherever or skirting the house cluster, hoping can produce fish.  Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.  However, through systematically logging data and studying successes and failures, we have come up with a system that has produced success for us on the Big Devil.

Dave Genz talks about Football Fields and Tennis courts when searching for perch.  We like to call them hole sets.  We use 5, 10, and 20 hole sets to hone in on and dial in perch and crappies on Devils Lake.  It is basically the same concept, a little different in terminology and approach.  We are definitely not random though.  We study, dissect and pick apart every bay and area we plan on attacking that day or weekend or period of time.  We log perch bites that we find for a yearly perch migration pattern and we also log any and all perch bites that we hear or know of for the yearly migration.

Why you might ask?

Prediction!

Devils Lake transitions can be and are pretty predictable if you have the data to research and look back on.  We, at Devilslakefishingreports.com will absolutely do our best this winter to get you on, and keep you on fresh schools of Perch and Crappie and even tip you on to some awesome Walleye action as well.

In coming Reports we will bring you parts 1 and 2 of our Perch and Crappie system, complete with Hole Set forms and logging documents that we use to enhance our fishing experience.  If you are a hard water nut like we are you won’t want to miss it.