What A Season

February 27th, 2010 by Tony Hansen.

My feet are soaked. My jeans are wet to the knees. And I'm pretty happy about that.

I just got off the ice and it was an absolute mess. There was 12 inches of snow covering about 6 inches of slush and water. Trudging out there with the shanties and gear wasn't easy. But if you love to fish, you do what you have to do. There are those who understand that and, well, then there's everybody else.

To be honest, the bite was definitely off. A buddy and I fished about two hours and caught maybe 20 gills. And, yes, that's definitely a slow day by this winter's standard. I read something the other day that literally made me laugh out loud. It made the statement that the ice fishing season has been somewhat slow. Clearly, that's someone that either got some bad information or hasn't spent much time on the ice this year. By all accounts, the 2009 ice-fishing season has been nothing short of incredible.

I don't claim to be a spectacular ice angler. But for the past five years, I've sort of rediscovered the sport and have steadily increased the amount of time I've spent on the ice learning all of the new tactics and technology. I'm not sure exactly how many fish I put on the ice this winter but I suspect it's close to 1,000 -- of course 100 of those came in one evening while fishing for smelt in southern Michigan. Yep, southern Michigan smelt. It's a pretty cool deal and I'll post the OD episode on that early next week.

With the ice-fishing season starting to wind down, I've been thinking a lot about the fish that we caught and how the season panned out. This was a special season for us here at MUCC and MichiganOutofDoors Magazine because it was the first we were able to provide the type of ice-fishing coverage that so many people have been asking for. With the creation of MichiganOutofDoors.com and our new OD production, we were able to deliver a variety of ice-fishing coverage and offer tactics, conditions and advice that anglers could actually use during their outings. The "same day" timing of the video has been a big, big hit with viewers, surpassing even my own expectations -- and I had my expectations set pretty high!

From catching giant perch to walleyes to crappie to panfish, we were able to provide coverage that viewers could actually use. In fact, just this week I had a number of e-mails from readers and viewers that were excited about the fact that they had used techniques or information they had seen on our website to help them catch more fish because the techniques we were using were current.

I never really considered myself to be a high-tech guy. But the changes I've seen happen in media and the way the outdoors community uses information convinced me that we had to be much, much better. And, judging by the amount of traffic on this site, it's pretty clear that we made the right choice. To be honest, we haven't even unveiled our coolest ideas yet. But trust me, they're coming. And you'll love them.

Anyway, after gettting off the lake today I realized the ice-fishing is definitely coming to a close. There is still plenty of ice -- about a foot on the lake I was on -- but the slush and water certainly made it very difficult to fish and the ice was markedly softer with all that snow on top. We're supposed to get some warmer temperatures soon and that will only make the ice more of a mess. But who knows, maybe the warmth will rid the ice of the snow and then we'll get some more cold temps and I'll be back on the ice. But, if not, I guess I won't be too disappointed because that means spring is just around the corner. And that means steelhead, walleye, bass, turkeys -- the list goes on. And so does the fun. And you can bet that Gabe and I will spend as much time on the water and in the woods as we can. Because that's what we do and it's who we are and I think that's what's helping to make MichiganOutofDoors.com such a success.

 

If you haven't got your fill of ice-fishing yet, you'd better hop to it before it's too late. And when you're finished, look us up. Who knows what kind of things we'll be doing then.

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