Fly Fishing for Northerns under the Ice

By Thomas Porter, President

Northern Waters Flyfishers Inc.

“Fly fishing? In the winter? Boy, you’d better be a good cast to hit an eight-inch hole!”

There is no shortage of jokes when I tell the locals that I flyfish for Pike through the ice of northern Saskatchewan.

It just makes sense really. Why fuss with bait and weights and leaders and all the typical ice fishing gear when you can simply use a big fly and piece of good steel line?

I started thinking about ice fishing more and more over the last few years. As winter blankets our lakes with the white stuff and open water becomes a memory, flyfishers fall into a bit of a depression. I like to call it Malaquatus rigiditum or “the sadness of stiff water.” I suffer from this affliction every year.

It happens to even the best of flyfishermen as the temperature drops below zero. The sufferer often experiences a feeling of dread followed by disbelief and a shortness of breath. Accompanying this psychological change, there is muscle atrophy in the casting arm and a marked weigh gain due to inactivity. This condition worsens as the mercury drops and the hours of sunlight begin to diminish. Only when solstice passes and the ice breaks up do flyfishermen come out of their hibernation and begin to recover.

I feel the treatment for this condition is simply to get out there anyway. I know there isn’t the romance and finesse of the perfect cast or the excitement of seeing a huge fish take a gulping rise, but there is still tension on the line followed by a good fish fry and a couple of beers. Not perfect, but better than a kick in the reel.

I started tying pike flies a few summers ago after getting my first tree trunk of a fly rod – a 9wt 9’. It was a beast of a thing compared to the supple, feather-like rods I was used to casting on mountain streams.

I didn’t take long for me to fall in love with pike fishing, though. The action is fast, the fish are huge, they are in good supply and the fillets are delicious (when we keep them). With all that fun packed into one fish, why not pull a few through the ice?

Northern Pike by their very nature are opportunistic predators. They will eat anything that moves. This holds true even when you have a foot of ice on a lake. As long as they’re in the area and see something tasty, you’re usually in for a good ride. Pike are a sight feeder, relying on movement to locate prey. When dealing with a fish like this, some recommend shoveling the snow off the ice for a few feet around the hole. More light getting through means the fish will have an easier time spotting the hook.

When ice fishing for pike, a good streamer fly with lots of junk tied to it is a good investment. Lots of feathers, the odd bit of rabbit fur and a mess of tinsel and you’ll have the perfect pike fly – no bait necessary. The only real criteria for tying ice-fishing flies for pike is that they need to be heavy. Often times rabbit skin and bucktail will prevent a hook from sinking. This isn’t a big deal in the summer months when you sinking line brings the fly to the right depth. In the winter however, we don’t have this luxury, you need a weighted fly.

I like to use a really big pair of bead chain eyes and tie a monstrosity of a Whistler pattern behind them. Rather than putting twinned grizzly hackles out the back, I will substitute a two-inch piece of straight-cut rabbit fur in white, red or yellow – high visibility for our sight-hunting friends.

Another material well suited to the construction of ice fishing streamers is Icelandic Sheep hair. It is fine, breathes well when wet and comes in a variety of wacky colours. Tied in the same fashion as the bunny fur Whistler variety, the Icelandic Sheep hook nails pike just as well. This heavy, highly visible fly creates a great action when jigged – falling and looping with a natural ebb and flow.

For weight, the flytier can also use an oversized pair of dumbbell eyes available from your local flytying supply store. These can be fitted with a variety of reflective and colourful eyeball stickers. The result is an effective baitfish imitation guaranteed to wet the appetite of even the most finicky jackfish.

The problem with a lot of traditional pike jigging is that the baitfish is often hooked through the spine, left stationary or jigged vertically in an unnatural fashion. Pike aren’t too fussy and often take this offering willingly. With the action and realism of the jigged fly however, the hits are fast and furious with little doubt that the angler has a fish on.

In a field test of our ice flyfishing prowess, another club member and I journeyed to a frozen slough for a day of jack fishing with his family. While his father and brother fished conventionally with hard tackle and bait, Tyson and I lashed flies to the end of our lines to see what the outcome would be.

In short order, it became evident that our technique was just as or even more effective for jacks. The flies were landing fish at the same rate as the hard tackle.

An interesting comment came from Tyson’s brother Jesse though about a dozen fish into the day – “I think they might have something with that fly business. Look at the size of fish they’re getting!”

He was right. Although the hard tackle was taking fish at the same rate, the fly-caught jacks were bigger and more aggressive. When cleaning one of our larger fly-caught fish, we found a juvenile pike was its last meal. This juvenile was about the same size as a lot of the fish our hard tackle counterparts were landing.

I was sold and I think a lot of the other fishermen on the lake that day were as well.

Although the overall experience can’t hold a candle to the thrill of open-water flyfishing, ice flyfishing for pike is a suitable stopgap measure, easing the woes of the winter-afflicted angler. Not only does it encourage people to get some activity in the winter, it also ensures they tie a bunch of pike flies over winter. The best time for pike on the fly in open water conditions is as soon as the ice comes off. The flyfisherman needs to have a full box of big streamers in the spring anyway, why not throw a few together for ice fishing too?