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Fishing from an ice house takes some preparation and setup. We were walleye fishing in central Minnesota on December 28 on 17 inches of ice in the Yetti fish house.
Ice house fishing is kind of like sitting in a deer stand. You don’t just pick a random tree….you scout out the area first to put yourself in a position to increase your success. That’s the goal with the ice house as well.
It’s a lot of work to set up the house, and it’s not super convenient to move it, and it takes time and effort to move. You can’t just cast your bait on the other side of the boat like you would in the summer. So, doing your homework is important. Sometimes you can get lucky by guessing…but most of the time, putting in the research and homework will help.
Now, here some things to consider when setting up a house to fish in from my experience. Location is everything. You hear it in real estate….location, location, location. Because you can’t just easily move the ice house once you set it up, you want to give this some thought….if you want a better chance of catching fish.
Here’s the questions you want to ask yourself. Do you want more of an opportunity to catch fish during the day when it’s light out, or do you want more chance during the low light time and at night? Which species do you want to target? Here’s the challenge…when you try to be all things to all fish, you run the risk of not being very good at any of it. This is my struggle. I want to find that sweet spot where you can maximize your opportunity to catch fish all the time….but that’ pretty unrealistic. So you have to make some decisions. This is what goes into my thought process.
When ice fishing, safety is the number one priority. No ice is 100% safe, and when you’re driving on it with trucks pulling a couple ton ice house trailer, you need to be cautious, early in the season. We are fishing here the week after Christmas, and so not all lakes, and sections of lakes were accessible. So that limits your options. Also, the amount of snow cover can be a limiting factor, depending on the machinery you have. All of these things are variables that can keep you from fishing where you really want. So you have to think through these logistics.
After you cover those bases, you want to find the lake structure that looks positive for holding fish for your goals.
The same rules hold true in winter as they do in summer. Fish always need three things….they’re pretty simple (but maddeningly frustrating at the same time). Fish are concerned with shelter and food in the winter. In the spring they’re concerned with reproducing…but this doesn’t factor into their location during the winter. No I’m not expert, but having a general understanding of fish patterns through the seasons will put you on more fish. You don’t want to go into this blind in order to maximize your catching chances.