Late February/Early March Bring Together A Perfect Storm Of Conditions!
Everyone has had that feeling before, sometime around mid to late February, the sun comes out, the temperature rises and we have a few days where we near record highs. The snow really starts to melt and people start uttering the word Spring.
A week goes by, the temperatures plummet and we are thrown back into the deadly clutches of winter, HARD!
That Spring Time feeling never really goes away though and we find ourselves having an extra bounce in our step and twinkle in our eye.
Is The Fishing Community Any Different
The same thing seems to happen to the fish under the ice as well. They have a little extra aggression to them. Their flurries of biting get a little more energetic and last a little bit longer.
The cloudy days are a little less dormant and the sunny days become the Days of Lore and epic catches come through the ice.
Do the fish get spring fever just like us?
Why Does This Happen?
I don’t think an animal with a stimulus-response brain can get spring fever, but they do have biological clocks that are much more in tune with the environment than ours are.
There are probably 3 key factors that drive this pre-spring aggressiveness and we think that understanding those factors has put more fish on the ice for us.
They are:
- Baby Fever
- Light Switch
- Smorgasbord
Baby Fever
Oh yeah, sweet loving’, or in the fishing world, sweet spawning. Those females are really getting bloated with eggs about this time and those eggs are getting bigger and bigger. That egg production requires protein and calories and those big females are packing it on the only way they know how and that is to put on the feedbag.
Light Switch
All that snow that has accumulated on the lake is melting and getting thinner and thinner. As it gets thinner and thinner, more and more light is reaching the bottom. More light means less timid Perch. Less timid Perch means fish that are going to be a little more aggressive and a little less careful.
Smorgasbord
Just as those Perch Eggs and Walleye Eggs are maturing in the bellies of their mamas, other animals within the animal kingdom are doing some of the same stuff, preparing for the spring ice out. That includes different invertebrate larvae emerging from mud flats and such. That food chain never quits and it really picks up as sunlight increases and those longer hours of more sun start the life cycles rocking.
The Best Is Yet To Come
We strongly believe that the best fishing of the season is from this point until the ice is no longer stable. The time to get out on the lake is now.
All of the pictures for this post were all acquired during Late Ice!!
Good Luck out there!
Hey Travis, I bought your gold mine package a few months ago and am going up Monday to check out the North six locations. Would you be willing to give me a location where I could spear in the morning there? Be happy to pay for it if you can make it happen! Thanks
The little bay to the north and east of the pepsi barn has a sunken road on the east side and the whole inlet is very shallow as you get to the east end and it is traditionally loaded with pike. Wolford’s Bay is also usually loaded with pike and is kind of legendary for being a pike factory. With the melted snow and more light getting through, I would think that spearing should be pretty good.
Good Luck
Thanks for the help, looking forward to this weeks reports and waypoints