Being a die-hard life-long fisherman, people understand my obsession with all things bass fishing. But being from New Hampshire, they never understood why I had never been ice fishing prior to last winter. It's not that I had anything against ice fishing, I just never had a chance to get out with people that knew what they were doing, and were more interested in fishing than drinking. Last year, the right opportunity presented itself, so I finally made my first trip.
My first time ever ice fishing was magical. The weather was beautiful, and the smallmouth were HUNGRY. We landed close to 20 smallmouth bass between the 5 of us, with a ton of large perch to go with them (don't worry, all of the smallmouth were released!) I pulled up a 4 lb 3 oz smallmouth myself too, which remains my personal best through the ice. With how much fun I had for that one trip last season, I made it a point to get out there again several times this season, once all of the open water here in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts froze over. Now after two trips out on the hard water, I'm definitely glad I decided to pick up this new winter hobby.
I'm finding that there's a lot over overlap in general bass knowledge between ice fishing and open water fishing. That's something no one really told me about before, but as I'm getting further into this, I'm seeing a lot of the same patterns/tendencies that largemouth bass and smallmouth bass have when the water hits 40-45 degrees. The way they relate to structure, or the bait fish in the area, is very similar under the ice as it is when there's open water in that 40-45 degree range. Putting my knowledge to work has brought me some great success on the ice in my only three ice fishing trips I've made, and I'm looking forward to continuing it for the next few weeks.
Yesterday was my most recent trip, and it was a blast! Myself and three friends were able to finally fish a small, local, private pond we have been looking at for many years, and it did not disappoint one bit. We lost a few big fish right at the hole, but we made the most out of the rest of them. Again, every bass was released to be caught another day!
