Cisco Inferno
We certainly timed a trip up north this year well. Attractive locations in multiple directions, great ice, and a couple days to fish. The nice part was we had been on ice for awhile so I really didn’t care about catching fish. Exploring new waters is half the fun and if it didn’t go well it would still be fun trying.
I was happy to have my Clam Outdoors Defender motion float suit on, especially when I rolled up to the launch and saw all the broken up jagged ice. A spud confirmed I was good to go and I made my way out to where I wanted to be. There was definitely some varying thickness and only 1 other shanty in sight. I never found anything less than 4 inches and some places had up to a foot. It looked like other than that shanty only one other person had ventured out there. It was my kind of spot.
One of the most useful things about having a Humminbird Helix and Lake master maps is knowing right where I’m drilling. I popped my first hole on a likely contour and noticed a few marks down there. I was targeting cisco but these were really close to the bottom. They were big marks so I was thinking maybe I found some magnum perch. First drop and it was game on! Talk about an easy exploratory trip. These cisco fought way different than the ones I’m used to on Muskegon. I was starting to think maybe I had a brown or small steelhead on. These things would come all the way up to the hole and then rip back down 50 feet. The next drop produced the same exact results and I knew I was about to have some fun.
The other guys left and I had one of the most action-packed days on the ice with no one around. I’m not sure how many I landed or shook off underneath the ice but it was a lot. Clam Speed Spoons and a 1/8 ounce leech flutter spoon were working really well. Although I’m sure you could have caught them on a variety of baits. The whole key was to get them moving upward and keep taking it away from them. The seem to miss the bait a lot so a lot of times they would go past the bait and usually you wouldn’t feel the bite because they were moving so fast upward. If you kept it at the same level you would get a lot less bites except when they were really active. It was a lot like Lake Trout fishing. Playing keep away is the name of the game there too.
It was good enough to rally the troops to make the 2 hour drive the following day. I was going to try and find some Lake Trout ice. But I also knew I was going to be on some sketchy stuff and might not have any action. It was hard to turn down the sure thing opportunity in front of me especially with friends willing to get in on it too. It wasn’t a good as Friday but It was still pretty damn good. One of those rare moments happened when all 5 of us could sit in a small spot and have a conversation with each other while catching big fish…for awhile. I don’t know if we ever had all 5 hooked up but we definitely had 4 hook ups on at once. A lot different that most of our fishing trips where we get to the ice together but then spread out looking for the best stuff. There were also a couple of mystery fish that got away. Who knows if they were just big pissed off ciscoes or something else. I know I fought one for a long long time and one of the other was reported to be much heavier than a cisco. You just never know what might show up in waters like that.
I’ve never fried them before but we did some that way for the family that night. The rest were either destined for fish cakes or released as I wasn’t going to have time to smoke them. We’ve been getting a few on Muskegon so that might be an option later in the season. I’ll put out a full Muskegon report before the weekend but fishing continues to be a lot of work although some big fish are hitting the ice.