I like to fish at night. Pioneering ice angler Dave Genz, who has long worked with the In-Fisherman staff on ice projects, does not. Perhaps that’s because I spent my formidable years in search of nocturnal flathead catfish on the rivers of southeast Iowa, while Genz grew up fishing for smallmouth bass on the Mississippi River near his home in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Habits established during childhood often prove difficult to break, just as the way anglers fish for one species often affects their approach to other fish, even in much different fishing situations. So it is that Genz prefers to fish lots of holes for crappies during the day, while I’m more inclined to set up in a high-percentage area after dark.
During a trip to South Dakota last winter, though, we merged our approaches by hitting several key areas after dark. Most of the fish responded to tiny jigs tipped with maggots and jigged aggressively through the middle third of the water column, but we took some of the largest crappies on small minnows suspended beneath floats.
Perhaps more important than the experience was the night fishing perspective that Genz passed along during the short intervals between bites, a perspective formed through thousands of hours spent on hundreds of frozen lakes from New York to Montana.
Dave Genz: Lots of good reasons to fish at night during the open-water season. Less recreational boat traffic after dark, especially on lakes near major metropolitan areas. Less fishing pressure during the first and last hours of darkness, especially on weekends, but also during midweek on popular fishing lakes.
The fact remains, though, that every fishing task is harder to perform after dark. Simple knots are difficult to tie, familiar lake sections look foreign, and the mountain of gear that seems so organized during the day is transformed into a tangled mess after the sun goes down. Versatility usually suffers as a result, and most veteran night anglers usually settle on a single presentation to minimize tackle and rigging.
Cooler nighttime temperatures may offer relief from summer’s heat, but often are uncomfortable during early spring and late fall. The effect is even worse during winter, when a mild winter day gives way to a bitterly cold night. Holes freeze solid, ice forms on rod guides, and the feeling in fingers and toes eventually becomes a numb memory.
So Why Fish At Night?
But that’s not to say that there aren’t some good reasons to fish through the ice after dark. Often the only time people have an opportunity to fish is after work. With more hours of darkness than daylight, fishing after work during winter usually means fishing at night. And in most areas, fishing at night means either walleyes or crappies.
For me, that decision always has been easy. During most of the ice season, crappies are just more fun to fish for than walleyes. They often suspend several feet off bottom, making them easy to locate on sonar. They’re typically more aggressive than walleyes, too, especially during the middle of the night.
