Ice fishing producing quantity, not size

ZILWAUKEE – I never doubted for a minute we’d catch fish. The Saginaw River has been on fire this winter. The only question was what kind of fish we’d catch.

We were on the ice in a pair of matching shanties, side by side, and fishing around 9 a.m. By the first time we could really stop to catch our breath – I looked at my watch; it was 10:05 a.m. -- my partner Tom Goniea had caught 22 walleyes. I’d caught 16. That’s a fish between the two of us roughly every 120 seconds.

But only one of them – the ninth Goniea caught – measured the requisite 15 inches to keep. (And that one stretched 15 and 1/one-millionth inch.) The rest? Anywhere from 14 ½ inches to the size of five-dollar cigars. Back down the holes they went.

That’s been the word on the river since anglers began hitting them well, even before ice-up. Lots of shorts. Not many keepers.

“I think this is just such a great nursery area that most of the fish stay in the river until they get to 13, 14 inches, before they head out to the Bay,” Goniea offered. “Sure, some of the small ones leave, but I think the bulk of them stay here.”

That makes sense. There’s no reason to assume that when the upstream migration begins – when the walleyes begin following the minnows upriver in late fall – that the little ones lead the way. Generally speaking, the size of the walleyes caught increases the nearer you get to the March 15 season closure. The assumption, then, is that the bulk of the big ‘uns don’t really head upstream until they’ve got spawning on their minds or some other stimulus (say, increased flow from the melting ice?) gets them moving.

Our second hour of fishing was slower than the first, so much so, that at 11 a.m., Goniea abandoned the shanty to do a little hole hopping outside. Over the next hour he caught 11 fish, he said. I stayed put and caught one.

So what gives? Goniea reported that he caught a fish almost immediately at every hole he fished. Did he attract the one or two aggressive fish in each school below him? Who knows?

Catching slowed to a crawl. By 1:30 p.m., we had 67 between us (and one pike). They’d come in a variety of ways.

Goniea fished two rods – one with a jigging Rapala, one with a lead-headed jig, tipped with either a half minnow (on the Rap) or whole minnow – raising one while he lowered the other, interrupting his cadence only to set the hook and reel in an ‘eye. I started out with one rod, changing between a spoon and a Rapala, each tipped with a minnow, and both caught fish. Goniea got so far ahead of me I’d never catch up, so I rigged a second rod with a sinker and a perch hook and fished it inches off the bottom. My catch rate improved dramatically as the dead rod produced, too.

We’ve both fished the Saginaw River for years. The first time I fished here through the ice, 25 years ago, we were smack downtown, in the shadow of the Temple Theatre. It was a warm day and we didn’t even bring an auger, just fishing the holes others had left. On my first drop with a Jigging Rap and minnow, I caught a keeper ‘eye.

Goniea’s introduction – back in 2006, he remembers -- was not nearly so dramatic, but he caught fish and has returned every winter the ice has been good (which isn’t every year). He always catches fish.

I’ve fished with Goniea here in two winters past and it’s always been the same – pretty fair fishing but not as much keeping. (Though Goniea returned last winter a couple of weeks after our trip and iced 14 that would keep, going through about three times that many to get ’em, he said.)

When the fishing stalled, we decided to take a break, disassembled and hauled out the shanties, loaded up the truck, and went to town for a bite to eat some additional tackle. We were back on the ice and set up well before 4 p.m. The catching commenced forthwith. But the fish were the same, mostly around 13 inches, with the occasional walleye that would scare 15 inches and the odd fish that was brave enough to tackle a minnow half its size. But no keepers.

Friday afternoon traffic picked up on the ice – snowmobiles, quads and an army of foot soldiers – but the vast majority set up downstream of us (we’d dragged those shanties a long way) and some set up in the shanty town just upstream from where we fished. We had our area mostly to ourselves and the fish kept jumping on our baits.

As sunset approached, the bite slowed again. About 5:45 p.m. Goniea announced he’d had enough for one day, but got on his phone and immediately began calling folks about fishing the next morning. Frankly, I didn’t blame him.

We’d caught 101 walleyes. One of them kept.

“Everybody says this bodes well for the future,” Goniea said. “But every year it seems like it’s the same thing.”

Only this year it’s more so. We did more than 100 walleyes in less than seven hours of fishing. Do the math. That’s stroking them.

But as I’ve no doubt mentioned in the past, given a choice between never catching another fish and never eating another fish, I shouldn’t hesitate to pick the latter.

For his part, Goniea did return the next morning, with two partners. They caught 106, he said.

One of them kept.