Snow Globe Trip

We’ve been waiting for years for ice conditions to align for a travel trip to trout and pout water. Unfortunately life doesn’t allow for much more than a quick getaway this year. Just enough time to feel like an adventure but not enough time to really learn anything. Big oligotrophic lakes up north can be some of the most challenging fishing there is in my opinion. Finding the life in so much dead water is a lot of work but the rewards are worth it. A lot of snow on the ice and some nasty weather just meant we would have to work that much harder on this trip.

We would be fishing Crystal Lake this time. It is the closest “exciting” lake to me and I’ve always wanted to try it. Plus we had a free place to stay which was amazing. I was leaving Saturday morning to get up there with a plan to fish most of the day Saturday on into the night and then again on Sunday. It was smooth sailing from my house to about Pentwater and then it got progressively worse. What was forecast as a couple inches of snow turned into a lot of snow. One thing that was uncertain was what was the parking going to be like. I am pretty particular about how I park my stuff so I was a little concerned especially since I was going to get there about 10:30. By some miracle the perfect parking spot was available to me as someone had just left. There was very little trailer parking at this access so I was very thankful to get that one.

I was real curious about the snow conditions next. There was more than I would have liked already but the good news was that I only hit one small slush pocket on the ride out to where I wanted to start. I think it took me 2 holes to mark my first fish and that is a win on a water body like this. I went after it those marks aggressively as that usually works for lakers. The faster you go, the faster they go. That is the normal strategy and you just keep pulling them up, up, up until they bite. I got a poor reaction from those fish and every other lake trout I marked when trying those tactics. That caused me to miss some good opportunities. I actually got in one area where I was pretty consistently marking fish although they were not big trout. I could not make them commit and I really wish I could get some time back there to try some more finesse tactics. But instead I just have to look back on it with regret and learn from it. The good news was that there were fish around. Much different from the hours of marking 0 fish when we fished Torch last. Trevor was getting some and we were getting things figured out.

All the while it just kept snowing and snowing. The temperature and wind were actually pretty pleasant but I had to set the Clam Nanook up a few times just to get out of the snow. It was getting in all my gear and filling my shanty up. Plus it was not making things great for getting around on the quad. The biggest bummer of this was there was no way to make a big move. Especially since more people were arriving at different times to fish with us. I’m also living with some major regrets of just going to check something out a far distance from an access. But once again lack of time and conditions jut made it difficult.

Really though the trout were a bonus. I really wanted to catch burbot. I had high hopes we were going to get into them too as the burbot bite had been good up there. But once again it is tough to make adjustments and figure that in a few hours. Especially with others in the group dependent on your gear. Mobility was not the best and although I covered a bunch of ground at dusk we just kind of settled into to a couple areas after dark. Hoping the burbs would come to us and it seems like that usually doesn’t work. One thing that was unique about this area is that the burbs seemed to be sliding into areas that had tons of perch. At least that’s my theory, they just didn’t slide into the areas we were in that night. It was a bummer watching my chance slip away but our crew did get 2 burbs and Trevor got his first ever. That is always exciting but I hope next time we pile them up.

It was a late night and we were all exhausted as we worked pretty dang hard all day to figure something out. We had a trout area to go back to and I was hoping to find some straggler burbot right away. Being out late meant we weren’t going to get there early enough for that though (also living with regret on that one). When that didn’t work out there were at least trout to fall back on. The big challenge today was the weather. The wind was violent and it was still snowing. Most of the time you couldn’t see shore in any direction and I was thankful to be tucked inside the Clam.

I did get to experience a couple laker battles which can be pretty intense on the ice. Normally we do all of our lake trout fishing solo but on this trip with the conditions there was 2 to a shanty. Which we got greedy at one point and tried to get both of the fish that were down there. That resulted in a fish that was tangled in line and because of that we couldn’t get it’s head into the hole. We resorted to the gaff and even that was a struggle. Somehow it all worked out and the line also ended up with no knots. Major success for the day.

We ended up bailing earlier than we had planned because it was just awful out there in the blowing snow. When the crew with the snowmobile had to go, it was in our best interest to get the quad and SXS off the ice too. I got stuck a couple times on the way out in snow drifts and it could have been really ugly after a couple more hours of drifting.

One thing to note on the trip was that I filled my Clam heater with snow at one point. Like bad, really bad and I could not get it lit after the fact even after thawing it out. Once I got home, I looked into it and there is a brass tube that the pilot comes out of. If you take the bottom of the heater off, there is a hole in that brass tube. I blew it out with a little compressed air and the heater fired right up again. Likely in the wind and snow I lodged something else in there that was preventing the propane to get to the pilot light. I’m glad it ended up being a simple fix and is something to think about if you ever have heater problems.

The thing that is tough about this trip is I definitely caught a lot less fish than I’d have hoped. But unlike most of your standard fishing trips, these ice trips are just a little different. You really don’t know when you’ll get the opportunity again. So to deal with crappy conditions and just feel like you didn’t put your best effort in, kind of stings. It however was great to see everyone that I almost never see anymore unless we go on one of these trips. I do hope to get back up there somewhere this year for one more crack at the burbot. But if I don’t I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to try once and I know that I learned a few things for the future. Even if it means being out in the boat on warm winters. There is always a way to make it happen!