The key with all these lures is to let them spiral naturally, yet to be in control. You have to be able to set the hook immediately. That means you need to be a line watcher. Anytime you see your line dart, flick, or hang suspended in the hole, strike immediately. And the best way to do that isn’t by reeling up your line or setting with your rod. It’s by doing both simultaneously as you run backward away from the hole.

Trolling Through the Ice

Trolling through the ice often is the most potent jigging motion you can employ. To troll, let your lure free-fall to the bottom under controlled slack. Then jig as though your rod or hand line is a brush and you are ever so slowly painting a low ceiling just above your head. Now, here’s where the trolling comes in. While you’re jigging this way, back away from your hole, and keep walking backward until your lure is right under the ice.

Sometimes I speed troll by dropping my lure to the bottom and briskly walking backward without jigging at all. I simply keep my rod tip pointed toward the hole, ready to strike, knowing my tube, spoon, Rapala, or airplane jig is spiraling up to the surface like a fleeing baitfish. Other times, I rip-jig while trolling my lure up to the hole.

Expect to catch a trout anytime you’re trolling under the ice. You’ll be amazed how many times you’ll feel a laker pop your bait at the last second, only inches below the ice. And if you troll a jig or spoon up from the bottom and don’t feel a strike, walk it back down before starting a new troll. As you do, though, maintain constant control over your lure. And if you feel any loss of weight, run backward and set the hook.

Trout Conservation

Lake trout live in some of the most pristine, awesome places on earth. And while a mature female produces only a relatively small number of eggs and may spawn only every second year, lake trout can live for 50, 60, even 70 or more years. Also, being a ductless species with the ability to control the amount of air in its swim bladder (the gurgling noise you hear when you land one) a lake trout is releasable in winter, regardless of the depth from which you catch it. In fact, recent research shows virtually one hundred percent survival, in the coldest part of winter, so long as you don’t gut-hook the fish.

Unfortunately, even the best lake trout waters are fragile, inhospitable environments that grow trout at rates of less than .25 pounds per surface acre on a sustainable basis. So it’s easy to overharvest and destroy a lake trout fishery, sometimes within a single winter.

Take one or two small trout to eat, but release the moderate and larger fish, taking care not to expose their eyes or gills to snow or long periods of subfreezing temperatures. If we all do that—long into the next millennium—we’ll continue to enjoy one of the greatest sporting rites of winter.

* Gord Pyzer recently retired as the Kenora District Manager, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. He operates Canadian Angling Adventures (807/468-4898) a personalized guiding service that specializes in ice fishing trips into the northwoods.