Ice Fishing to Start the New Year

by Shawn Proznick
(Kamloops)

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Happy New Year folks. What a great year this promises to be. Last year I got hooked on fly fishing, including attempting to tie my own flies.

Now, I am about to embrace the sport of hard water fishing. My beautiful wife helped me out with this new outdoor venture by getting me an ice hut for Christmas as well as a new ice fishing rod. After borrowing an ice auger from my brother in law, I was all set.

My friend Tim joined me on the morning on the 2nd and we started up to Red Lake as I had heard good things about it last year and thought that it would be as good as any for a first attempt. On the way up to Red Lake, we stopped at the Buck and Doe Ranch to visit Harvey and Dianne Miner, a couple of locals that I got to know years ago when I worked up in the area, to see if he had any tips on where to drill a hole. Apparently we were not the only people with that idea as there were 2 guys there when we got there and 4 or 5 others showed up while we were there. A fresh pot of coffee was put on and being the sucker for black gold, we ended up staying for a bit longer than the rest of the guys who chatted for a few minutes then left for the lake. Too bad for them that they left so eary as Harvey broke out his fly box from his days of tying and gave us some jig head ties that he had made up years ago that he thought would be the right stuff!

With new flies in our hats and a mug of warm coffe in hand, off we went, to find our glory hole at Red Lake. As we approached the first put in area we saw that the parking area was full so we continued around to another area around the corner of the lake that had a small downhill trail to the edge of the water. There we met up with a couple of the guys that stopped in with us earlier and they reported not much luck for them so far. A quick scan of the lake let me know that this was the lake to ice fish on as there were at least 20 other people out there. We cut a few holes about a hundred feet from the shore in about 15 feet of water and worked those holes for about an hour with out so much as a fish sighting.


Our second set of holes were just off shore in about 10 feet of water and we were able to see fish right away. We put the ice hut over the holes and set up camp for the day. The ice hut was great as it cut out the wind and made it much more enjoyable in the cold weather. The unexpected bonus of the ice hut was that it cut out the direct light and allowed you to see to the bottom of the lake and any fish that might be interested in your offering.

We worked that second set of holes for the rest of the day, jigging and wiggling the lines, changing flies and hoping for fish to come along. Eventually one did but it was only about 5-6 inches long so we let it back in the water. One much larger fish would cruise by now and then but it was not in the feeing mood I guess. As luck would have it, another angler took residence on one of our first holes and brought in 4 or 5 small fish as we were holed up in our hut.

End of the day total fish out of water was only one but we had a great day and intend on going back to some hard water very soon!

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