Fairy Lake Ice Fishing – March 4/11
With a rainfall warning in effect tomorrow for much of Southern Ontario, Darrell and I decided to hit the ice on Fairy Lake in Acton this afternoon and try our luck for some crappie.
With the recent fluctuating temperatures and the rain that had been falling all day I was more than a little skeptical about the ice conditions. Despite the survival suits I am always a little leery of being on the ice and gliding across ice that had an inch of water on it did not help me relax. However, after Darrell drilled a couple of holes, and took the length of the auger took break through the ice, I figured it was safe enough to continue across the ice to the deep water.
It was around 4pm when we started fishing and the bite was non-existent to begin with. We were using our now standard rigs for crappie through the ice – light rods, 1lb test Vicious Panfish Ice Line and Lindy Fat Boys jigs tipped with a Gulp wax worm. I had bought a new St. Croix ice rod at the Toronto Spring Fishing & Boat Show and this was my first chance to put it to the test.
After leaving our first holes without a bite we moved to new holes a little closer to shore, still in about 20 feet of water. My technique was a moderate jigging motion followed by a pause, then a slight jigging motion followed by another pause. And after one on those pauses I saw my line jump and I set the hook on our first crappie of the evening.
The bites were were still slow as we tuned in the correct depth with the next few fish. It’s harder to do without electronics but we eventually found the active bite between 15 to 17 feet of water.
As the sun started to go down the bite picked up and we were landing fish every couple of minutes. They weren’t big fish but they made us happy and every time I released one I thought about how much fun I’ll have catching them in the spring and summer.
- One of the evening’s crappie
- They weren’t big but they were fun!
- The surprise of the night – we finally caught one on a tube!
In the end we fished for two-and-a-half hours, reeled in 22 fish and lost countless more. My new rod proved to be very sensitive and I quite often set the hook too early, losing the fish. I had to learn to wait a split second before putting pressure on the line. All-in-all the new rod passed with flying colors. It has a super sensitive tip which allowed me to feel everything, even down the rod handle. The length was perfect for me to get enough pressure on the fish to get them in. After twenty minutes with this rod I didn’t want to use any of the other ones, it just felt like the natural rod for me.
The people walking along the shore were giving us some strange looks. We may have looked slightly crazy standing on the ice, wearing big orange suits, fishing in the rain but I’ll do it everyday if I can have that much fun.
Cheers!
argosgirl
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Not a bad days work. Those are some nice little crappies!
By the way, thanks for the #FF on Twitter earlier on today.
Thanks! There are bigger crappies in that lake but I’ll take whatever I can get.
I’ve added the Lindy’s Fat Boy jigs to our database. If you are interested it would be great if you could share some of these Crappie catches on our site.
In addition, if you have any recommendations to other ice fishing baits that we should add that would be great.
Done! A Rapala verticle jig would be a good add too.
That is great, thanks for using the site! I’ve added the Rapala Jigging Rap and Jigging Shad Rap vertical jigs now as well.
Awesome. Not unlike my ice fishing trip the same weekend. I’m jealous of your St. Croix rod. I have to make due with my spring bobber and can’t feel a thing. I have to watch it intently.
I found you because you followed me on Twitter. Thank you for following so I could find you. I’ve added you to my rss reader, so I look forward to reading about more of your adventures.
Thank you for taking the time to reading my blog and follow back on Twitter! If you get the chance to get a new ice rod I really do recommend the St. Croix rods – they are awesome.