Early Ice Esox

What an impressive winter we're in the midst of. Connecticut hasn't experienced one this cold since 2017. Ice anglers can fish just about anywhere their hearts desire in the Nutmeg State. The deep snow and slush conditions haven't made things easy, yet there are stellar hardwater options for those willing to put in the effort and brave the elements.

Before we started measuring ice thickness in feet, I got in two pike trips on two different lakes. The common thread between the outings was frontal systems bringing in fresh snow. Both days produced a handful of northerns—nothing giant, but a solid way to kick-off what's looking like a lengthy season. 

Deeper water options have since been filling my cup, though I'd like to do an excursion for pre-spawn trophy esox before all of this ice fades away. 

Re-Cover

The number of false alarms was starting to remind me of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. The flag on one of my Heritage Lakers kept going up with nothing to show for it. There was zero wind to speak of that day, and my bait was the large and dead variety. Something was messing with me. Still, sooner or later, I just knew I was going to walk up to a spinning spool. I made a small adjustment by lowering the bait, laying it directly on the silty bottom. The next flag was the one. It turned out to be the largest northern pike I had ever landed, through the ice or otherwise. 

That series of events took place one mild afternoon in January 2017. Fast forward eight years and a photograph of me releasing the fish, taken by Aaron Swanson, now graces the cover of The Fisherman magazine. The new cover of an old catch has been a fun walk down memory lane. It's good timing, too, considering the Northeast is finally experiencing a winter like the old days. Unlike the last two years, there is no shortage of ice fishing opportunities. I'm trying to get out as much as I can, revisiting old haunts and even getting my girls on the ice with me. If not now, when? 

Tight lines and stay safe out there!

the wisdom and faith of a child

Editor's note: Chad Wilde is a gifted writer and good friend. This story, a fine tale about his son's first encounter with a northern pike, is the last installment in a series of guest posts...for a little while at least. All of Chad's work is worth reading, but anything on getting the next generation more passionate about the Great Outdoors sits particular well with me. Enjoy...

Sometimes, though it may work against your conventional knowledge, it is wise to listen to the ideas of a child when fishing.  Children come from fresh places.  Their experiences are always building.  They pay attention to what works and seek to replicate it, as they pay attention to what doesn’t and seek to eliminate it.  

For my son, River, he always has ideas about what fishing lures, techniques, and methods should work.  And I gently try to impart him with what knowledge I’ve picked up through four decades of angling while also giving him the leeway to try out his own ideas.  On a blustery cold November day when fishing for pickerel, if he wants to throw an eight-inch top-water snake lure, by all means have at it buddy.  But after a while I’ll say, “Maybe we should try subtle little jerk baits?”

Sometimes, it is a hard stop no.  Like, a spinner bait just won’t work dangled below that giant bobber.  Even if we do tip it with a live nightcrawler and add several pieces of split shot for some unknown reason.  But I try to listen, and in his learning, I learn as well.  

Everyone who knows me as an angler should know that my favorite type of fishing is predator fishing.  Give me Esox whenever available.  Pickerel, northern pike, muskellunge.  These are the fish that have my whole heart.  

I’ve instilled this in my son.  River will gladly and readily fish for anything that swims, god bless him, but given the choice of venue he’ll usually ask me to take him to The Pickerel Palace.  This is a small, weedy pond near us here in Willington that is infested with pickerel.  

“Esox, they’re like dinosaurs, Dad,” he tells me.  I agree.  And who doesn’t love dinosaurs?

When tasked with doing a class presentation project on a wild animal, River naturally chose the pickerel.  He studied them, he wrote up a report about them, and we printed a number of pictures to use as visual aids.  When it was time, he dressed up in his suit and tie and presented his findings to his class.  

“Esox, they are dangerous fish”, he said.  “Like dinosaurs!  Look at their teeth!”

We both love the perceived violence of the Esox fish.  We like their teeth, their aggression.  We love the places they live, slow flowing rivers and warm water ponds.  Their hiding places, deep weed beds, downed timber.  They move in our minds like silent menaces, and when we find them while fishing we are one with that menace and we connect with something different inside ourselves.  

All humans are animals, after all.  And in Esox fishing, one can connect with the deep places where the luxury and softness of modern life is stripped away.  We become the hunting predators we once all were.  And in Esox fishing, the predator chases the predator and we’ll see who comes out on top.

Last Fall, when River was turning 10, I decided it was time to expand his predator fishing and get him off The Pickerel Palace and on some better waters.  Waters where I hoped to help put him on his first northern pike.  To this effect, I reached out to my friend Steve Pogodzienski.

Steve is a pike guide and friend who has taught me more than anyone else about fishing for predators.  It was time for me to call in the big guns and get River in touch with a fish that would gladly eat a Pickerel.  But first, Steve and I had to talk strategy.

It had been a remarkably wet summer and the river we planned to fish had been on a rollercoaster.  Huge storms regularly dropping inches of rain that made flows impossible to fish for long periods of time.  Impossible to fish, and for fish to even eat.  

This worked for us in a sense.  We would have to watch the flows as summer gave way to fall.  And we would have to find a relatively dry period where the river would drop to an acceptable level for a float.  Steve told me that when a window opens up and the flow is right, those fish will eat.  I believed him fully.

I knew River would relish the chance to go fishing with Dad and Steve on a serious trip, and I wanted to make sure he had a shot at catching a fish.  We timed it perfectly, and we hit the water in early October during a window that was wide open.  At the launch, my son was a ball of excited energy.  He was ready to go.  He had so many ideas about what would work, and he brought a number of his own personal lures to use.

He was excited that I got to use my fly rod.  When we fish, generally I do more guiding and less fishing, as it should be.  And he notices this.  A wise friend had once told me you could be a dissatisfied angler or a satisfied guide depending on how you approached fishing with your child.  I chose wisely there, but today I wouldn’t need to guide since we had Steve.

Our plan was to get on the board with some bass fishing.  River is a very good bass angler, and I wanted to make sure he connected with at least one fish on the day.  I told Steve as much. He decided to work us up into a backwater cove off the main river that Steve knew held bass.  Before we entered he told me, “Throw your fly up in the mouth there.  Pike will post up just outside these coves sometimes.”

I did.  And a solid pike literally left the water trying to eat my fly.  I was a bit rusty, I panicked and trout-set.  The line was limp.  We all knew then, as the water’s surface calmed from the eruption and I cursed at myself inside, that the window was indeed wide open.  A good sign.  No more than 20 minutes into our trip and I had an aggressive take.  

The cove itself was one of those deeply weeded places you just know hold warm water fish.  We discussed lures to use, and River had a series of suggestions.  Steve settled on a pink Slug-Go for River’s spinning rod.  I sat back and watched my boy get into the fishing, and he fished well.  The benefit of the pink Slug-Go was that we could all clearly see its darting glides through the cove.  

It was impossible to think the bait wouldn’t get River an eat.  Before long, I heard his small boy voice say, “Got 'em!”  He was on his first fish of the day.

He proceeded to pick a number of bass out of the cove as well as a giant crappie, and he was thrilled to do so.  As he released a particularly chunky largemouth he said, “Don’t go get eaten by a pike!”  He knows the food chain, and he knows who sits at the top.  I was proud of him.  With the skunk off, it was time to go look for pike.

I have to say, I rebounded nicely from the early miss.  I took a deep fish.  I had counted down the fly until it disappeared below the dark water, carried by a full sink line.  Once it felt down enough, I began to work it.  A ghostly strike.  There is a point in a deep retrieve with a pike fly where the whole thing suddenly gets a bit weird.  

You can’t feel anything, no slack, no fly, no line.  The rod just feels weird, fully empty.  What has happened here is that a pike has inhaled the fly.  Some unseen transaction has occurred and the lack of any feeling means the fish has eaten and moved towards you with the fly hopefully still in its mouth.  This is when you quicken the strips until your mind’s eye tells you, “Now.  Strip set!”

This doesn’t always work out, but it did this time and the strip set placed the iron in the jaw.  After a brief fight, we had our first pike of the day.  It was a great moment to share with River, and Steve.  River had never seen a northern pike first-hand.  This clearly fired him up and I could tell he wanted one of his own.

Shortly after, I got another eat.  This one on top, like the first that I had missed.  The fish materialized only one strip off the bank, below some overhanging tree limbs, and swirled the fly.  I waited, nicely, and set hard.  We had a second pike.  As we admired and released the fish, River suggested maybe he should try a different lure.

He had won a swimbait in a charity raffle.  I don’t know a damn thing about swimbaits, but I asked around.  It was a 3:16 bait and apparently retailed for $150.  This perfect bait for pike fishing he refused to cast, due to the potential financial impact of losing it. “What about jerk baits?,” he said. “ Maybe they’d eat a perch looking lure, Dad?”

We considered this but collectively decided that the Slug-Go would be the best bet.  A properly tied pike fly with a Buford-style head behaves just like a Slug-Go.  That side-to-side sway, so sexy in the water.  Steve and I felt it best to keep the soft-plastic on, for now.  The window was open, and we were scoring fish with my presentation on the fly rod.  The Slug-Go acted like the flies I was using so we stuck with it.  We fished on.

It got slow, and I could tell River was tired.  We had woken and left early, and through the afternoon we had fished hard.  He sat for a while, quiet, had a snack.  Did some more fishing, reeled behind his back for shits and giggles, bombed casts, kept fishing.  But the early luck had run dry.  

I was fishing the B sides of the water, when I was fishing at all, gladly giving River the preferred lies.  I really enjoy just watching him fish, and I wanted him to get a pike.  I already had a pair.

As his energy level dropped even lower, we anchored up on a long slow bend in the current with a dying weed bed on the inside edge.  “Ok, little buddy,” I said. “Let’s make it happen.”.  

After hours with the pink Slug-Go, he was determined to try a new approach.  He rummaged in his backpack for a lure that had come in his Mystery Tackle Box that month.  He held up a two-inch rubber paddle tail grub in a sunfish pattern. 

“This is the one,” he said.

“Are you sure, buddy?,” I answered. “That one?”  I sort of looked at Steve side-eyed here.  It was just a little thing, definitely a decent little bass bait, but Steve could tell how bad I wanted him to get a pike and this selection didn’t seem to fit the bill.  I pulled back, and placed trust.  

“Ok, if you say so,” I relented in a sigh.  It wouldn’t work, I thought, but he had faith.  Steve tied the tiny lure on to a length of bite tippet.  

Now at this weed bed, he insisted I fish as well.  No more sitting around, Daddy.  We’re on a fishing trip!  So, both of us went to work on the weed bed.

I knew there was a fish there, and I felt pretty certain I was going to get it since he was forcing me to fish and I felt pretty confident in my presentation by this point.  These pike, I knew they were eating.  River pitched the weighted bait into the weeds.  I started to work slightly downstream of them.

On a pike float, when it comes, it just mesmerizes the whole boat.  And suddenly, it came.  River made his usual utterance, “Got ‘em.”  I turned to watch, was this a snag?  

I saw motion in the weed bed, something was there.  He had a decent amount of line out, and the bend in the rod told me this was a decent fish.  I thought it was a good bass.  But then I saw it flash in the water as it ran, free of the weeds.  No, this was a pike.  It got serious, real quick.

He fought that fish well, gave it no chance really, and licked it quick.  He did well, and we all began screaming when the pike was netted.  “What’d you catch!?,  I yelled.”

“LET’S GO!,” he screamed back.  “I caught a ginormous pike on a lure that my Dad didn’t think would work!”

They know, they always know.  What we show them we must show wisely as they are always seeing and always learning.  We must trust them to follow but walk on their own two feet.  We must tread carefully as they will certainly follow.  When we’re too tired, they’ll carry us as we would them.  But it is best that we walk together.  We must trust them and trust ourselves to teach well and learn hand in hand.  

River’s fish was bigger than either of the two I had caught.  A proud moment for me, watching Steve hand him the fish.  He knew how to slide his hand below its gill to grip the bony structure there.  He supported it and grinned for the photos.  Steve held the fish up current and we all watched it regain its strength.  

We grew quiet.  He called it a dinosaur.  The beautiful fish steadied itself.  “I told you that that was a good idea,” he whispered.

“You know, I’m not gonna lie…,” I couldn’t finish as I broke out laughing.  

Steve said through his own laughter, “I know.  I know.  I saw you watching him.”

We retired the lure, and now it was his turn to sit back and watch me.  He had an unforgettable look on his face.  Now, not to toot my own horn, but with the monkey off his back I felt free to get as many more as I could.  The window was clearly still open.  So I did, and ended the day with four pike, but who's counting really?  River didn’t get another one on the pink Slug-Go, but we surely weren’t fishing the two-inch paddle tail.  That lure is up on his bookshelf right now.

As we drove home, he fell soundly asleep in the seat beside me.  The cool fall air outside, the warmth of the car’s heater within, a belly full of fast food.  Maybe he dreamed of dinosaurs?  When I finally slept, I didn’t dream of nothing but the wisdom and faith of a child.

ocular violence

Editor's Note: Chad Wilde is a gifted writer and good friend. From time to time, I am fortunate to showcase his work here on The Connecticut Yankee. This is the second of a three-story series. Thanks for taking time to read it. 

At the theater, there is a marked feeling of anticipation.  Gatherings, and rustling.  Meeting one another, before the show, below the marquee with the light above glowing down to announce the attraction.  For us, the theater is the boat launch on the Housatonic River, and soon we’ll be seated for the show.  A pike float.

There, among our stretched lives, are moments that bond relationships.  These moments, our classics, are forged from our shared passions and our enactment of them together.  Our summa’s and alphas.  Our omegas.  And when the codas of our lives swim into focus and the sounds of the world hush to everything, we are left with nothing else to hear.  

We find our places, as Pogo engages the jet and the boat departs upriver from which we will begin the float.  We enter and take our places in the house.  And at the theater, we speak to one another.  

The early part of the drift is the gathering, the excitement and anticipation.  Discussions of the players in these events to come, the sheer drama of them.  We catch up, we don’t see each other often, and our chatter is warm.  We are excited.  

Me and Aaron, we aren’t exactly slouches, we’re not great either, but we pass the mustard, so Pogo has little actual guiding to do save the navigation of the boat.  This is finding your seat; and preparing for the performance to come there in the theater of our minds.  Getting comfortable.  

As the drift progresses, there comes less conversation, more anticipation, a heightened focus since it is going to happen.  A nice quiet, not uncomfortable.  And in the draining of sounds there, we kick back and luxuriate.  The only sound left, the subtle stroke of the oars through the water.  Here, we get ready for the show, we begin fishing with concentration.

And afterwards we maybe look to each-other, those who attended the same events, those in the know who have heard the same sounds, seen the same sights, and we may say: Did you see that?  Our classics.

We collectively lower voices, our breaths bated, as the lights flicker on and off.  And then the lights go down gently as the curtain waves from some bustling behind.  And there, in the calm quiet of it all, the curtains finally open and all murmurs hush.  The music begins.

And the setting is the very end of the Berkshires, the rolling green hills, the deep bends in the river as it cuts through southern New England.  The laydowns, old deadwood, the edges of weed beds, the slow motion of the current.  The clay banks, where small birds nest and flitter from, off across the fields below the hills.  It is a lovely stage, well set.  

Punching the pike fly up tight, a good cast.  Soft advice; rod tip in the water, from the director.  The tan fly sinks into the flow through a slow three-count and the show truly now begins.  The fly quarters out on the first strip, teases and curtsies.  The curtain, it begins to draw apart.

Three strips in and 18-inches deep the articulated fly takes a perceptible alteration of path following downstream just where the drop off falls to channel, it is still visible.  And it kicks as the strip is ready to pull again on my fingers, and the curtain is fully open.

The fly speaks its preamble.  I am femme-fatale, I am deathly pale in the tannic water.  I am the damsel, dancing.  I am distress.  Drunk athletic and loose of limb.  I am the dying baitfish, it says.  Come take me.

A classic.  One you can talk about years later.  The performance, itself.  Heading into a show, you know the players.  You know whose presence and action on the stage will set the memory.  And you wait for the climactic moment, the chaos of reveal.  The moment the antihero appears guns blazing and the fight kicks in.  John Fucking Wick and Jesse Fucking James.  Perfect choreographing of the dance.  The fly; retrieved and briefly figure-eighted below the gunwales.  

Plots, they never thin.  They only thicken.  And the more often the fly pulls from the water, into the back cast, and then shot out to the bank to repeat its shifting flow into the retrieve, the more this plot does thicken.  Each new spot we pull up on, this is the scene for the climax.  This is the place.  

The silence of the theater.  The hiss of the fly line, rhythmic through two back casts, and then the longer, sibilate sound of it shooting through the guides and perfectly tucked tight to the target, here an upstream blowdown.  All gnarled tree limbs and crags disappearing below the bourbon-colored water.  A perfect spot.  A perfect cast.

The director, from the rower’s seat, speaks quietly, saying, Nice.  The highest of compliments.  And the dance begins.  

Come take me, I am failing here, I am swimming but I tire.  See how I palpitate and quiver.  I turn tenderly, expose myself to you that follows: the antihero hidden.  The following star.  The fly is irresistible.  And it is now time.  That which we have come to see enters the stage.

A Northern Pike in perfect profile arching and engulfing the fly from behind, just as you prepped to take the next strip of the line, and when you are in best contact with the fly.  And you watch the moment of grace.  The ocular violence occurs before your widening eyes.  The show has begun.  The flash of its movement, when all that it is, its purpose revealed, is just mouth and teeth and eat.  That hit is like a drug, and addicts find addicts.  Imperceptibly, we all see the show go down.  We share.

Something has happened.  There it is.

This pike has taken the fly with an incredible urgency, and once taken it seems to pause in the mind’s eye.  It does pause there, ponderously.  All the world gone but this and you saw it all with your own two eyes.  Internally, a gasp choked back as you prepare for the drama.  

The fish turns, it moves back upriver to the blowdown from which we are drifting.  And your strip set hits perfect, this time, and the line goes ever so tight.  The rod tip leaves the water arching and bending to the opposing weight.  There it is, you say aloud, a rapt audience.  The fight is on.  

Then, the head shakes.  It makes desperate runs.  It is a brawling fight.  A remarkably long minute, if that.  It’s longer if you get a hot one.  You do what you can to land the fish.  It is apex hunting.  Big game hunting.  It doesn’t always work out.  There are sad classics after all.  The drama, the plot, is thick.

Every predator fish risen, is a great thing and to land them is electric.  And in that electricity, you can meld yourself to other people privy to the same surging current.  

The space between happy classic and sad classic is razor thin.  For all of us.  You are looking for it, that connection with a predator.  You all are.  You want the ocular violence so badly and you are so grateful when it comes.  This can weld steel between us, either way.  

It doesn’t happen every time, a great show.  But the activity of taking in the culture more than makes up for viewing a so-so production.  But not this time, this one is a classic.

Pogo has the net ready as the fish boils the surface and makes a run below the boat.  Leaning into its performance, you give but make the fish earn it.  Its tail sweeping it away below the visibility line.  Then, back to view, and spent.  On its side slightly, but always, you know, it is gathering its strength to run again.  The show has to end.  The net slides under and once contained, the fish kicks violently against its hold, all gnashing and swirling.  But beaten there.  

At those climax moments, when we sit on the edge of the seat and wait for the resolution, we are all indebted emotionally in this show.  Invested.  Years later, in our easy chairs, together we clink our glasses and toast to the true classics, we lean in towards each other and ask, “Do you remember that?”

Another show has run the course.  The boat’s comfortable silence is replaced by our applause and adulation for the performance.  With plyers, removing the hook from the corner jaw.  Holding it, the memory, in a standing acclimation as the flashbulb pops and it is preserved for memorialization.  

The hero bows.  Placated, and spent.  You hold its tail with a hand below to support its belly.  You hold it upstream until the languid sweep and kick of the fish tells it is strong enough to be taken away from you, for now.  And it slowly moves off from your hands, it dreamily disappears.  Back stage again, heading right back to the blowdown from whence it came.  And you swish your hands in the cool brown water.

Standing back up, in ovation, grinning, asking:

Did you see that?  At the curtains close.

Origins

Over the years, they have become the fish I target most through the ice. For one, the chance is always there to pull something really special up through the hole, but also because they fight well and the water they inhibit here is some of the first to freeze and last to thaw. They are gorgeous fish in their own right and formidable predators with a mouth full of sharp teeth. My style of ice fishing for them is primitive, which is a nice change of pace from the more technical fishing I do for other species. Without a doubt, northern pike are impressive and enjoyable creatures.

Esox lucius are not native to Connecticut. Like many species, they were introduced at some point in time and have thrived ever since. Wherever pike roam in the Nutmeg State, they are indeed the apex predator of that body of water and can grow into giants. The current Connecticut state record stands at 29-pounds, taken from Lake Lillinonah in 1980. Just to our north and east, the records in Massachusetts and Rhode Island are both 35-pounds respectively. It’s no wonder why targeting trophy pike in open water and through the ice has become so popular in the Northeast.

Northern pike are predators that eat almost anything and everything they desire. 

Starting in the 1980s, fisheries biologists from CT DEEP have done an outstanding job with the state’s northern pike management program, building it to the point where significant natural reproduction is happening in the marsh systems of a few of our more popular pike fisheries. After graduating college, I was able to witness the success of the program firsthand by taking a seasonal position within DEEP’s inland fisheries division. It remains the most interesting job I’ve ever held. One of the more fun responsibilities it entailed was helping capture and stock northern pike fingerlings.

The capturing part took place on a DEEP-managed marsh along the Connecticut River. When it floods, northern pike (and other fish) make their way into this marsh and a culvert pipe, their only exit back to the main river, is blocked off. While inside, some of the adult pike spawn successfully and the marsh is drained months later after their offspring reach the desired fingerling size, about four to six inches. It was one of my tasks to sit on the river side of the culvert and catch these fingerlings in a large net as they exited the pipe. There was no knowing when or what was coming through. Sometimes large pike would shoot out like rockets—a startling experience on a good day, even more so with a hangover—and I would have to wrangle them from the net and release them back into the river. The fingerlings, however, would be carefully counted, sometimes fin-clipped, and placed in tanks on stocking trucks and driven to various pike management lakes around the state.

On one evening that summer, I remember releasing some of these little guys in the shallows of a favorite northern pike fishery—it must have been like ringing the dinner bell because immediately a larger fish (my money is on largemouth bass) blasted a few unlucky ones hanging out just below the surface. A bunch of these fingerlings, I’m confident, survived the odds and grew up to be trophy-class fish.

Aaron Swanson with a trophy CT northern pike.

Fast forward 15 years to the subpar Connecticut winter we are experiencing now. A recent catch, it turns out my final of the short ice season, got me thinking again about the origins of the pike swimming in our waters. As soon as it came topside, I knew this fish was a little different—it had a pattern unlike any pike I’d seen to that point. I immediately thought it was a cross between a pike and a pickerel because of the chainlike markings along its lower flanks. It wasn’t a very large fish, but it was healthy as a horse and surely unique. Looking for clarity if it was a hybrid or not, I later sent a photo to biologists involved in DEEP’s pike management program. I am glad I did because they shared some interesting info I wouldn’t have learned otherwise.

The biologists acknowledged its unusual markings, yet could not make a definitive call on whether it was a hybrid or not without an up-close look at its opercle, the plate-like bone also known as the gill cover. It turns out that scales are present on the upper half of a pike’s gill cover, but are absent on the lower half. On pickerel, however, the opercle is fully covered with scales. And on hybrids, scales cover exactly three-quarters of it. The biologists added that in the 30 or so years that DEEP actively trap-netted adult pike for broodstock, a pike/pickerel hybrid was captured almost every year, sometimes up to two or three of them were netted. I found the possibility of catching my first hybrid pretty cool, but the story doesn’t quite end there.

My final fish of the 2019-2020 ice season and an interesting one at that.

One of biologists circled back with an interesting twist. He had seen pike with similar markings before while collecting fingerlings from Connecticut marshes and believed my catch stemmed from a past stocking of fish from New Jersey. “For a number of years, we’ve been receiving free pike fry from New Jersey that we’ve raised in our marshes, or at Burlington hatchery, to fingerling size and have then stocked in a couple of our pike management lakes,” he said. The neat part, I thought, was that they could tell exactly what body of water in New Jersey the pike originated from.

The biologists had sent my photo to their counterparts in New Jersey’s Division of Fish & Wildlife, who recognized it straight away. Evidently, there is one reservoir down there where the pike exhibit similar chainlike markings. Several of the adult pike from that reservoir were used as broodstock back in 2016. Fingerlings that were raised from the New Jersey fry were later stocked in the very lake I caught my fish in, which made sense because, based on its size, was thought to be in the range of three to four-years-old.

This is not groundbreaking stuff, but it was cool to learn the backstory of my catch. It’s not often we, as anglers, get that sort of insight or closure on the fish we spend so much time and effort perusing. This exercise reinforced my appreciation for the work of our inland fisheries staff and furthered my understanding of the gamefish I am fortunate to target each winter. With the growing respect for the species within the angling community and increasing use of proper catch and release methods, Connecticut’s northern pike management program has a bright future ahead. And hopefully I run into another 2016-year class Jersey fish down the road. 

Another example of a 2016-class pike that originated from broodstock from the same New Jersey reservoir.

False Starts

Connecticut’s ice fishing season has been a series of false starts so far. With our current weather pattern, it’s been a case of one step forward, two steps back. The first holes drilled in the state this fall were around November 17^th on the usual small, shallow ponds in the northwest corner of the state. But, in what seems like a yearly occurrence now, it warmed up before the ice really took hold. This temperature tug-of-war didn’t change in December. It got could enough for more ponds, coves, and even some larger lakes to lock up, but not could enough to build a solid base of ice to survive the next warm spell and bouts of rain.

All that said, if you really wanted to fish hardwater in Connecticut right now you still can. There are a handful of water bodies tucked away in higher elevations of either corner of the state where fishable ice endured.  However, they have been pressured hard and, at least to me, aren’t worth using up the few free passes I’ll be given this winter. With the predicted long-term forecast, it’s going to be a while before anything exciting freezes over again. We could use an extended blast of cold air. I just don’t see it yet.

The first hole drilled of ice season

While watching the forecast and plotting my next move, I’ve been reliving the two times I was fortunate to get out this floundering ice season. Two weeks ago, my friend Jeff and I were the first ones to put holes on popular northern pike fishery, which had us brimming with confidence. We were treated to an incredible sunrise and three inches of gorgeous, black ice, but the pike bite never materialized, at least for us. Another group did quite a bit of flag chasing and landed their share of hammer handles using small live shiners. We were fine ruling out smaller fish that day in hopes of finding one large pike, but our dead baits sat mostly untouched. Fish or no fish, it was an awesome return to hardwater. I hadn’t laughed that hard or fished on ice that nice in some time.  

Into the black

The most important tool in ice fishing

Tecumseh at first light

Frozen in time

Oatmeal in the shelter

About a week later, a couple days after Christmas, we were lucky to get out again, this time on a different body of water with a few more friends. I’d fished there once before and knew it was in our best interest to ditch the dead baits for live shiners. Collectively for the group, it was a day on the ice to remember with both quality and quantity. The morning action was scorching hot; multiple times there were two or three flags up at once. The best part of my day, a moment now seared in my brain, came during a phone call home.

It was FaceTime call with my girls who were enjoying a lazy morning during Christmas break. I was jigging over a hole in the ice with a phone in one hand and a rod in my other. I had tied on a Hali tipped with a piece of smelt flesh, hoping to entice some keeper yellow perch or calico bass. There were a few marks on my electronics, but I was caught off-guard when my rod doubled over. This was no panfish and the kids could sense my excitement. When Jeff walked over, I passed the phone so he could give my wife and kids a live look at my first fish of the ice season, and what turned out to be my first-ever northern pike caught while jigging. A pretty cool moment for those on the couch and on the ice. 

A FaceTime pike on the jig!

It was that kind of day where things just went right. We were surprised to even be on fishable ice. There was about two inches of soft, grey ice on top and almost four inches of black ice underneath, but with temps in the high 40s, we lost ice throughout the day. That turned out to be the last day this spot was fished in 2019. Even cooler was that all five of us caught our first fish of the ice season that day, which would have been the highlight if it wasn’t for two brutes that capped off the trip.

Our host Mark hooked the first a little after 10 a.m. He’s not an avid angler and doesn’t own ice gear (yet), but his brother Frank insisted that he take a few of his flags that outing. Mark chose the right one to take and latched into a hell of a fish on light line and fought it very well. When it finally came topside, the pike measured about three feet in length and was thick all around; by far the best fish of Mark’s life. It was the high point of the day for sure until Buddy topped it no more than 20 minutes later with another girthy pike that went about a half inch longer. Both pike were released in incredible shape. With good genes and appetites, those fish are well on their way to becoming trophies. 

Mark with the best fish of his life

Buddy with best fish of the day.

Between the group we landed about 20 pike that trip, perhaps the most I’ve seen in one outing, with a crappie and smattering of perch mixed in. The majority of the pike were smaller in size, but all well-fed and growing, which leads me to believe this area is a healthy nursery for northern pike. It’s nice to know that there is always the prospect of very respectable fish moving through too. The two December ice trips were a great way to close out a year in angling. Now it’s a waiting game for the next ice trip, but there are plenty of open water opportunities to keep anglers busy until then. All the best to you and yours in 2020—tight lines!

Bye bye ice.

Last fish of 2019!

First fish of 2020!