Catching a beautiful northern pike through the ice will always be exciting, but experiencing it with my daughter for the first time brought it to another level. It has been incredibly rewarding introducing kids to ice fishing. Their reaction to this predator getting pulled from the hole is going to stay with me for a long time.
The year of our lord 2021 was a game-changer thanks to a kayak
that willed its way to me. Investing in a proper platform for outings on Long
Island Sound and beyond had been on my mind for years. Things accelerated last
March in the classifieds section of a Connecticut fishing forum. For sale was a
second-hand Hobie Mirage Revolution 13 in good condition with a mess of
accessories going for a very fair price.
Contacting the seller set off a chain of events and a roller
coaster of emotions. As luck would have it another angler inquired just before
I did. The seller honored this order while assuring me the other guy wasn’t a
serious buyer. Daydreams of pedaling through epic blitzes were dashed when a
text, apologetic in tone, explained that the buyer was serious after all and—poof—the
Hobie was gone. It was business and life went on.
Two weeks later I found myself on that forum again with a
blinking icon on the screen. Low and behold it was a message from the fella who
beat me out for the kayak. He had realized that his back wasn't cut out for hauling
around the heavy Hobie and wanted a center console instead. An interesting
development, but by then the news was almost a week old and the kayak had been listed
for sale again. Here’s the kicker, a new buyer was supposed to pick it up at the
guy’s house yet never showed. By this point the Fish Gods had made their
intentions clear—this kayak was meant to be mine. I sent a deposit to hold it
and a few days later drove it home in the slow lane on 95 like there was a
newborn in my truck.
One of the best parts about this new chapter is all the
learning that comes along with it. While I made some memorable one-off trips in
the past—Costa
Rican roosterfish remains one of the coolest experiences of my life—I never
put in enough time to get truly dialed-in on a kayak. The technology has come a
long way since and this would be my first time using a yak with pedals and a rudder.
A rookie season of trial and error lay ahead of me and I was stoked to
reinvigorate my passion for angling by introducing new tools and techniques.
The first expeditions were family beach days where I brought
the Hobie along to get my bearings. After ferrying my daughters around and
making drifts for fluke (and catching mostly sea robins), I confirmed what I
already knew—the MirageDrive is outstanding. The pedal-system really gets the
kayak moving at a good clip and fingertip steering with the rudder control is a
breeze. I also accepted that it’s going to take some getting used to how wind,
tide, current, and pedaling influence my drifts.
By the time the fall run kicked into high gear locally, things
were clicking a little more on the yak. On a sunrise mission in September, I made
a short peddle to a submerged boulder field that boaters often blow right by. It
is ideal surfcasting habitat, yet the land around it is private and a pain to
reach legally. The kayak solves that issue and for the first hour of daylight,
each drift passed the point resulted in a hook up. Stripers and blues were fighting
over my spook, sometimes slapping it a few feet in the air. That morning was further
validation that the Hobie will be key for accessing spots that seem to be dwindling
by the year.
Arguably my most gratifying kayak experience in 2021 didn’t
involve a rod and reel. My friend Greg kindly invited me on an excursion to a
salt pond for an afternoon of clamming and looking for Native American
artifacts. We crossed the pond to a stretch of shore that has produced a number
of ancient stone tools for Greg over the past few years. It was awesome exploring
a beautiful and bountiful place that indigenous peoples had hunted and gathered
for millennia. There must have been a horseshoe up my arse because my first
time there I found a gorgeous quartz projectile point, nearly intact except for
a missing ear on the base.
Later we anchored in knee-deep water over a patch of silt
and sand that is home to quahogs—a species of shellfish that has drawn humans
to salt ponds like this since the ice sheets retreated. Using steel rakes with wire
baskets, we worked the bottom and occasionally heard or felt one of the hard-shelled
bivalves knock against the teeth of our rakes. A dozen or so perfect specimens made
their way home with me and were cooked on the grill that night. The kayak turns
out to be an ideal mode of travel to reach clam beds and arrowhead spots and my
hope is that these types of trips will only increase in frequency.
The last tour of 2021 came in November and had me in a
wetsuit because of colder water temperatures. Hellbent on catching my first
keeper-sized tautog from a kayak, I focused on jigging with Asian crabs over rocky
structure in about 10-15 feet of water. After realizing I need more practice in
the anchoring department, I moved on to peddling against the current in an
attempt to stay on top of the desired spot. Situations like this are why spot-lock
technology is so highly coveted. It was not optimal, but I managed to land a pile
of shorts before finally putting an old bulldog on my lap.
With birds wheeling in the distance, I gave up on any shot of a limit and released the blackfish. For the next hour I peddled after a body of fish that would surface briefly, go down and then pop up again a football field away. The water clarity was crystal clear and I witnessed multiple stripers following each retrieve of the lure. Not giant fish, but it was a gas and my legs were burning from all the chasing. A memorable way to close out the inaugural season.
At nearly 14-feet and 90-pounds fully rigged, the Hobie is a beast that takes some effort to get loaded and launched. Outings require a little planning ahead and a decent window of time to make the exertion worthwhile. Though I didn’t get out as much as I wanted this year, it’s a long-term investment and built to last. I plan to add a few creature comforts in the offseason, specifically setting up a fish finder. The kayak came with a couple older model Humminbirds that will do the trick until I upgrade down the road. Something to tinker with until we get ice strong enough to fish on. All in all, I’m pretty jazzed up on this kayak thing and look forward to the journeys ahead.
Ever been so consumed by a tradition that you couldn’t imagine
going without it? For me that comes in the form of an unmissable camping trip
each spring. Most of my life, the third Saturday of April has marked the start
of Connecticut’s trout season. Our small group, made up of family and a few
like family, have established a four-day holiday around what we call Opening
Day, and have been observing it religiously for decades. Even after the official
season opener was moved up by a week in 2015, we have stayed true to the traditional
weekend. Whether acknowledging it or not, all along the annual trip has been more
of a reunion and celebration than it ever was about fishing.
I used to joke that it would take the birth of a child to keep me from Opening Day Weekend. In reality it was a global pandemic that put a temporary pause on our longstanding rituals. A missed camping trip is a grain of salt compared to what many others lost to COVID, yet that didn’t change the fact that it felt damn good to be back together for the first time in two years. It felt like a homecoming.
When you participate in an annual excursion long enough, you
are bound to encounter all types of weather, especially in New England. This
year was one of those years that our gear and grit were tested right out of the
gate. Conditions were cold with downpours—far from ideal for setting camp. Accepting
the challenge, we took pride in making camp as comfortable as possible. Pop-up
shelters and a borrowed propane heater were the real MVPs of the weekend.
As tends to happen with this crew, food and drink took center stage throughout our stay. The usual staples were there but new to the mix, and highlight by far, was slow-roasting a large piece of beef over the fire. It was my good friend Aaron’s brainchild. He’d done his homework (a.k.a. watching BBQ Pit Boys videos) and with help from my Uncle Derrick, they fashioned a spit with an old motor to rotate a six-pound-plus ribeye roast over hardwood coals for hours. The meat, cooked to perfection, blew our doors off and a new tradition within a tradition was born.
While not practiced as much as it once was, fishing is the
common thread that originally tied this crew together. And, by the last full day
in camp, a few fish were actually caught. My cousin Max landed the lone
holdover—a handsome male brown fooled by a classic Woolly Bugger. I have DEEP fisheries
staff to thank for a fresh batch of Survivor strain brown trout that were just stocked the day prior. A handful of the
football-shaped thoroughbreds fell to a jig streamer from our pals at Farmington Flies. Though not too bright
when I caught them, over time these ‘survivors’ smarten up and start looking
and acting like the wild and holdover trout they are the progeny of.
When Sunday rolls around, it’s time to break camp as the reality of things on hold back home inch closer from the periphery. Throwing one last log on the fire helps stave off the feeling, as does downing a final hotdog before hitting the road. Like it or not, it’s back to work on Monday and, God willing, another 361 days until the next homecoming on that cherished patch of land.
Soak it in, boys.
There was a learning curve for
both of us. More planning and preparation involved than a normal outing. Each
of our patience was tested. It takes time to get set up on the ice before you’re
actually fishing. Then there’s no guarantee the fish cooperate. A few things
helped keep Cora interested—the first was going with other kids her own age. A
friend brought his two boys and they had a ball exploring while us dads put
lines in the water. Another way we kept them engaged was assigning tasks to
help with. It turns out that keeping ice holes clean of slush with a ladle is a
perfect job for six-year-olds.
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| Keeping busy. |
Lucky for us it got cold enough this
past winter to lock up a tidal cove of a large river close to home. The cove is
deep and full of fish, nothing I would dare ever eat, but there’s always
potential for lots of action and the occasional surprise trophy. Flags started
popping immediately as yellow perch zeroed in on our live shiners. A couple of
the perch were pretty large and all of them were fun for the kids to pull up by
hand and proudly display.
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| Cora hoisting an eater-size yellow perch (that we can't eat due to PCBs). |
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| A Hali jig tipped with a wax worm will catch almost anything through the ice |
A big mistake I made was not buying
ice grippers to strap under Cora’s small boots. We lucked out with crunchy snow
on the ice for her first trip, but the surface was super slick for her second
outing and she was falling all over the place, to the point I was worried about
her getting hurt. Thankfully our host that day brought an inner tube to lug his
gear out and I gladly towed Cora around in it, including to a few fish flags.
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| Enjoying breakfast in a warm, albeit worn, shelter. |
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| Cora with her first black crappie. |
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| A fine fish and proud moment. |
For the second consecutive trip,
the morning bite was hotter than two hamsters farting in a wool sock. The type
of bait and whether it was alive or dead didn’t matter; the pike were hungry
and far from shy. Flags were popping all over our spread, but particularly
along a weed line that ran perpendicular to shore. I had just released a small
pike and was rebaiting the tip-up it stripped when I heard something hit the
ice. I couldn’t immediately place the noise, so I scanned the direction it came
from and noticed about 50 yards away the rod in my I Fish Pro was missing from view.
Over the past few years, these
contraptions have helped modernize the way ice anglers catch fish with tip-ups
by allowing anglers to retrieve fish using a rod and reel, instead of the traditional
hand-over-hand technique. They were invented in Canada and popularized by
YouTube channels like Uncut Angling, Jay Siemens,
and Clayton Schick Outdoors. In Connecticut, where ice anglers can fish with up to six
lines, it’s impractical to use just I Fish Pros, but friends and I have added a
few to our line-up and it’s been a hell of a lot of fun.
When it fully registered that that
the sound I heard was my rod falling, I broke into the highest gear
one can travel in Yaktrax across ice. A pike had taken my bait and the stiff
wind had wrapped my bowed line around the tripped flag of the I Fish Pro. The
fact that my conventional reel was in free spool didn’t matter; when the fish
began to pull the fouled line, the rod jolted from its holder and was gradually
towed toward the hole in the ice.
From a few yards out, like the
scene in Sandlot where Benny steals
home, I slid on my side and scooped up the dragging rod that was inches from disappearing.
With some luck, I freed the braided line from the flag and kept the fish tight
in the process. That kicked-off an eventful fight consisting of me dancing
around the hole to achieve favorable angles while the pike peeled drag and
changed directions like a warplane in a dogfight.
By this point, one of my friends
watching the spectacle unfold ran over to assist. After a valiant effort, the
pike began to tire and its jaws emerged upward from the icy water. Aaron placed
his hand under its gill plate and hoisted up a very well-fed northern pike. Sporting
beautiful dark colors and a big head and shoulders, it was my best pike of the ice
season and my largest ever taken on a rod and reel.
A couple of seconds was all the
difference between me landing that fish and losing an expensive combo in a
frozen lake. A lesson was learned about the need to be more cognizant of wind
direction when setting the I Fish Pro, but that awesome fight and fish further
cemented the tip-up’s place in my hardwater rotation. Thankfully things turned
out how they did and I have noteworthy memory that will always be tied to that morning
on the ice.
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| Photo credit: Aaron Swanson |
