The one exception to the rule of anti-technology in ice fishing is the matter of portable sonar units. In winter under the ice, fish generally aren't scattered like they are in spring and summer. They tend to bunch up or suspend at favored depths and in preferred places, depending on water oxygen content, bottom contours, water temperature, and availability of forage. Owning a portable fish finder can speed up the process of prospecting for fish under the ice and cut down considerably on the muscle power required to drill a number of holes. Sometimes these devices save you the frustration of fishing ten feet below or ten feet above a concentration of fish suspended at a certain depth. Some ice fishermen even use the more sensitive of these liquid-crystal-type units to detect when a fish is about to take the lure or a bait. It is possible to see the blip of the fish homing in like a missile to the blip of the bait or lure—a sort of computer-age vision of what is taking place under the ice.
I grant that this is a form of visual stimulation and a technological edge, but I don't do it. If I use a sonar, it's to find fish, not to detect strikes. To me, fishing isn't a video game. Or if it is, my video is a very inexpensive, very low-tech device known popularly as a wire indicator or spring bobber. This ingenious little accessory can be purchased in hobby or tackle shops for anywhere from twenty-five cents to a buck-fifty, depending on whether it's in finished-product form or not. What it consists of is about a six-inch-long piece of piano wire, or modeling wire, soldered into a loop at the end. What it becomes is a highly sensitive extension rod tip attached to the end of the regular rod. The line is strung through the rod guides and tip-top guide and then out through the loop of the wire extension. The slightest hit, nudge, kiss, tap, or inhalation of the lure or bait by a fish results in a corresponding flex, jerk, or dip in the wire-indicator rod tip. Strikes that wouldn't register in a regular rod tip are graphically telegraphed into the wire. Casual ice anglers who haven't yet discovered the wire get lots of strikes, too. They just don't know it.
The wire indicator has revolutionized ice angling and helped take it from the heavy-duty business of running several tip-ups into the realm of light-tackle sport. In a way, the wire holds the same charm, if that's the right word, as a tip-up. The flag goes up or the wire goes down and that means fish. Most guys paint their wire tips a fluorescent orange or red, the better to detect the sometimes minute movements of the wire that telegraph the presence of a striking fish down in the depths.
Staring at the wire evolves into a mesmerizing duty—a kind of zenlike trance. The sheer concentration required in serious ice fishing is a total escape from the outside world. I have seen this intense concentration mirrored in the faces of ice anglers in places as diverse as perch-populated gravel pits and major reservoirs holding trophy-class lake trout. I know the feeling. I find myself suddenly looking up from the little wire loop at the end of the rod and realize that it takes a second to refocus my eyes on anything farther than six feet away.
My ice-fishing buddy, Murphy, refers to this as the thousand-yard stare. He makes it sound like combat. I suppose in a remote sense, when the elements are less than comforting, it is. The fight, at times, is with the elements. Even Leonard Wright, author of books and magazine pieces on the nuances of dry-fly fishing for trout, alluded to it in a story he once did on ice fishing for the New York Times.
He described how he felt after his first ice-fishing expedition: "As I approached my car I was surprised to realize that my chin was out and that, despite my numb feet, I was strutting a bit . . . the way fighter pilots probably do when they've just returned from their private perilous place and start walking back to the everyday world of the ready room."
© Article copyright Pruett Publishing
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