I guess -24C was worth it

[scarkner]

Wow, ice went from 3 inches thick yesterday to 5 inches today on the Rat, it was -24C when I arrived this morning... brrrrrrr!!! The ice was singing us a merry song as we headed out on the jet black ice. Got out and hammered the smelt and even got a bonus 3.1lb laker on one of the teeny tiny 3mm tungsten jigs that I use for smelt. The fish fought pretty hard and I am still amazed that the hair-thin line held and that it didn't spit the itty-bitty hook (I think it's something like a number 14!).

[Bear]

Very nice

[JimW]

Nice job!!! Hard to beat a feed of smelt!!

Are you fishing the smelt suspended using sonar? Never tried for smelt through the ice, use to net them in Lake Erie in April.

[smitty55]

WTG Steve. As I mentioned on 613 back in the day like 30+ years back the regular smelt fisherman out there would use what we call a drop shot now with up to four hooks on it and using strips of bacon as bait and a bell sinker or heavy jig. Once they caught some they would use the eyes as bait too. There were a few clusters of shacks out there in big water, many of them with windows blacked out and shoveled clear around the shack so they could sometimes see the schools traveling through if they were high enough. Not many if anyone had sonar back then. Maybe the odd green box. As it happened to you, it wasn't uncommon to get the odd Laker too as they followed the schools around.
Just curious as to what range of depths you were marking/catching them in?
Cheers

[CCLad]

Big league fishing landing that laker on that tackle set up! Well done Steve.

[Walleye'm Fishing]

Awesome outing for ya! Not sure why but high pressure blue bird skies and VERY cold (at least -20) is often a winning ice fishing recipe.

[scarkner]

WTG Steve. As I mentioned on 613 back in the day like 30+ years back the regular smelt fisherman out there would use what we call a drop shot now with up to four hooks on it and using strips of bacon as bait and a bell sinker or heavy jig. Once they caught some they would use the eyes as bait too. There were a few clusters of shacks out there in big water, many of them with windows blacked out and shoveled clear around the shack so they could sometimes see the schools traveling through if they were high enough. Not many if anyone had sonar back then. Maybe the odd green box. As it happened to you, it wasn't uncommon to get the odd Laker too as they followed the schools around.
Just curious as to what range of depths you were marking/catching them in?
Cheers

I have never been able to get them in the summer, too hard to stay on the school. These are rainbow smelt, so nice big fish, i get them on small rigs but they will even take some pretty big lures and spoons when they are agressive. We usually find them in 80-120 FOW, but they can be anywhere in the water column. On this particular trip they were all in the bottom 20 ft. But there have been other trips where they were in the middle or once they were right at the top of the water column and would actually swim past the hole and sometimes swim right up into the hole!

I have netted smelt too, but those are the regular little smelt that you would use for bait (or frying).