Late last winter, I stuffed two tip-ups into a bucket along with a couple dozen frozen tulibees, strapped the power auger to my quad 4 x 4, and headed off to an old familiar spot where I knew big pike gathered at late-ice.
The fish didn’t disappoint. The first one weighed about 18 pounds. The second pike felt twice as large, but I’ll never know for sure. Racing to the tip-up, I could hear the large metal spool whirling underwater. When I lifted it out of the hole, it sprayed water and looked menacing. Wrapping a finger around the braid would have removed a digit. And I couldn’t grab the line tightly enough to set the hook without burning my fingers. I’ve never felt anything so powerful, and I’ve landed several pike between 25 and 30 pounds over the years. I lost the fish eventually, but then it happened again, an hour later. Both events felt as though my line were attached to the bumper of a truck.
Back home that evening, I stripped off the line from my tip-ups and re-spooled them with 35-pound Berkley Gorilla braid. I also added fresh quick-strike rigs and honed the hooks. I could hardly sleep that night, and by daybreak I was back soaking freshly baited rigs.
The first fish, about a dozen pounds. The second fish, though, was a 431⁄2-inch horse, bulging with eggs, that weighed in the low 20s. I began to wonder: Was it a pair of fish like this one that had freight-trained me the day before? The next flag that flew answered my question. The tip-up shook and rocked violently in the hole, like a stick twirling in a blender. I couldn’t snug the line with a solid sweep, but somehow caught enough flesh in the fish’s mouth to slow it down and gain a semblance of control.
Ms. Pike and I sashayed back and forth for several minutes. Then she was right below the hole. So I looked, and saw the head of the biggest northern pike I’ve ever seen—and I’ve seen plenty of big pike, from the Canadian tundra to the Gulf of Sweden. She was humongous. All these years, I had believed such a beast existed but never guessed I had a chance to dance with her. As I strained to get the fish pointed up the hole, in classic big pike fashion, she turned on the afterburners and popped the superline like dental floss.
The scene was fitting: Late-ice, when the biggest and oldest members of many fish species congregate in large numbers in easy-to-reach and highly predictable locations. And therein lies the dilemma.
Many times, for many species of fish, winter ice-action is the best of the year. It can be so good, in fact, that it raises issues about seasonal vulnerability, overall harvest, and quality fish sustainability.
