Getting ready to travel north today and it’s raining. And snowing and freezing on the roads. Yuck. My good friend Chris Beeksma, who operates Get Bit Guide Service in northern Wisconsin, called. He’d just attended a show in Duluth. “Have you seen that new Quiver Stick from Thorne Brothers?” he asked, obviously anxious to fill me in.
“I’ve got one.”
“I hate you.”
And there it is, under my tree, adorned with a Pflueger fly reel, as discussed in the last post. The reel is designed for a 3W to 4W fly line—tiny for a fly reel. I filled it with several hundred yards of old, yellow braid, then topped that with 8-pound Berkley FireLine, and on top of that I rolled on 200 yards of 4-pound Seaguar AbrazX, an amazing line I discovered last year on Lake Superior, ice fishing for steelhead (with Sir Beeksma, I should add). It’s one of many customized fluorocarbons designed to be spooled on, as opposed to being used only as a leader material. It’s one of over half-a-dozen such lines from Seaguar, this one formulated especially for higher abrasion resistance.
I don’t know about you, but in my experiences with fluorocarbons designed as filler lines, they tend to be stiff. Too stiff to stay on the spool in really cold weather. Not AbrazX. In big wind on an open expanse, left in rod holders and “traps” (like the Automatic Fisherman), in temperatures near zero, and even when those rowdy steelies toppled the traps over—AbrazX stayed on the spool. Held it’s composure when the red-banded bandits sizzled off toward Ontario. And AbrazX didn’t snap when it had to be retrieved by hand out of the grooves it created, sawing into the ice at the bottom of the hole during those long runs. In fact, we never lost any of the fish we hooked. (We hooked plenty. Ask Beeksma.)
When I need leader material, ice fishing for anything from bull bluegills to steelhead, I tend to depend on Raven or Toray fluorocarbons. Tough as 9-inch nails. But, for main-line duty, Seaguar AbrazX certainly has to be one of the most manageable and abrasion-resistant fluoros on the market. Still looking for stocking stuffers? You’ll find six great ones in this paragraph, including the tasty new ice jigs from Lindy. Shown are the new Toads, Slick Jigs, and Lindy Bugs—all little panfish marvels designed to fish small but show up big on sonar.
Plenty of ideas here for packaging up under the tree, too. Like that 34-inch Quiver Stick. Or the other ice rod shown under the tree, from the opposite end of the length spectrum—the little 16-inch “in-house” Dave Genz Power Stick Combo from Clam Ice Fishing. The Automatic Fisherman (fabulous for deadsticking, and for shallow bites where you can’t afford to stand right on top of the fish). A Pflueger fly reel. Or that black bag in the background. I use that on every ice trip. Most rods, all tip-ups, and all your necessary component boxes fit in there, with extra pockets for pliers, forceps, clippers, scissors, tape, odds and ends. It’s the DeNeveau Tackle Tote from HT Enterprises and, in case my kids are reading this, I could use another one. (Hint, hint.)
So why the fly reel, you ask? Zero. Line. Twist. And it’s fun playing big fish on a fly reel. Now if it would only stop raining. I’ll be 4 hours north of here in about 6 hours if this stuff freezes. We always have a white Christmas in this neck of the woods. But, this year—looking iffy. Don’t really care—as long as the ice holds out.
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