One of the things I emphasize at my ice fishing seminars is the importance of running and gunning on the ice in the winter time. 

Never spending a lot of time fishing just one or two spots - or one or two holes - unless you're catching fish.  Indeed, I like to compare the highly mobile system we employ to the "two minute offense" professional football teams use when they're down a point or two late in the game and they need to score a quick touchdown or kick a field goal.  The strategy has rewarded us so many times with both numbers of fish and big fish.    Never was that more apparent, however, than it was the other day when buddy Ryan Haines and I chased some early winter crappies.  

Ryan's a top notch fishing guide (summer and winter) on Lake of the Woods http://www.lakeofthewoodsguide.com/lake%20of%20the%20woods%20guide%20service%20fishing.html He is also considerably younger than I am and seemingly delights in cutting copious quantities of holes in the ice with his trusty Rapala/Husqvarna ice auger.  So, needless to say, he is a joy to fish with anytime, but especially when we're running and gunning in the winter.  

Which brings us back to the crappie fishing the other day.  We went for almost three hours in the morning without catching a single fish.  In fact, we only saw one or two crappies come in on the sonar screen and take a quick half-hearted look at our lures.  So we kept moving, running and gunning, until we had cut so many holes in the ice, at all of our top spots, that the lake looked like the proverbial block of Swiss cheese.  

Around noon, we were running out of new places to check, so Ryan asked the inevitable question.  

"What do you think," he said, "do you want to double back and re-fish some of the spots and holes we've already drilled?"  

"No, let's get out of here and check Secret Lake #79," I joked.   

And that is precisely what we did.  We loaded up our snowmachines and sleighs, took off down the lake to where we had parked our vehicles, reloaded the trucks and high-tailed it down the highway to another nearby favourite crappie lake.  Once there, we pulled all of our gear and equipment out of the trucks again, re-loaded up the snowmachines and went running and gunning for crappies for the second time that day.  

Trust me, it was a lot of work, and most anglers wouldn't have bothered to do it.  But it was worth the effort.  My, oh, my, was it ever worth the effort.  

As a matter of fact, at the very first spot we stopped, we only drilled half a dozen holes.  But as soon as I dropped the transducer into the first hole, the screen lit up like a Christmas tree.  I was sure they were crappies and confirmed it the first time I dropped my bait down the hole.  The lure hadn't cleared the bottom of the ice when one of the red marks on the bottom started rising up to greet it.  

I stopped the jig about a foot above the fish, watched it continue rising on the screen until it covered my bait, peeked at the spring bobber on my rod tip, watched it nod, and set the jig into a something solid.   

Fish on!  

And that is how the rest of the day proceeded.  Over the next half-hour, I caught 14 more crappies on the next 14 consecutive drops down the hole.  It was, I kid you not, the fastest most exciting crappie fishing I have probably enjoyed in the past decade and among the top 2 or 3 fastest crappie experiences ever.  I mean, there were so many fish crammed below my hole, they were literally fighting each other to see which one could race up the fastest and be the first to inhale my lure.  



 It was so crazy, that after I had caught all the fish I wanted to catch, I called over Ryan and while he fish the same hole, I shot photos of him hauling up fish.  

But ... and this is the morale of the story ... had we not employed our run-and-gun offense, we would not have caught a single fish that day.  In fact, it would have been so easy to have stayed on the first lake, at the first set of holes we had drilled, and wait for the fish to come to us.  And if we had done that, we would likely have gone home bemoaning the fact the fish "just weren't biting today."  

They're always biting somewhere, and when you run-and-gun in the winter, you are going to eventually find them.  

Which is what buddy Tom Gruenwald was doing to the south of us, when Ryan and I were making hay.  Tom is a superb ice angler and one of the head honchos over at HT Enterprises.  Two ice seasons ago, Tom was up visiting and fishing with me and we tagged teamed on the biggest northern pike I have ever seen.  A 52- to 54-inch monster that easily weighed 32-plus pounds.  

But, while we were ice fishing for crappies in Northwestern Ontario the other day, Tom was doing the same thing in the Rhinelander region of northern Wisconsin.  

And by running and gunning, steadily moving around and drilling lots of holes, Tom also located two huge schools of crappies.   

"The fish averaged about 7- to 9-inches,” Tom said, "but we iced some 10 and 12 inchers, along with ten well conditioned fish over 14-inches that — get this— weighed one-and-a-half pounds!  

"We found the schools suspended, between  3 and 10 feet off bottom in 17 – 26 feet of water," Tom explained "and caught them using HT Polar Gold and Polar Lite micro rods outfitted with Accu-Cast reels, spooled with 3/4-pound smoke coloured sewing thread and the new HT size 12 Marmooska Deluxe tungsten ice jigs tipped with two coloured spikes."

   

By the way, a quick aside, for the past twenty years, HT Marmooska jigs have been my "go to" jigs when I can see crappies on my sonar screen but can't get them to bite.  But I have always used the lead headed Marmooskas, so I can't wait to get my hands on some of the new tungsten ones.  They're half the size of the lead ones at the same weight.  

 "The system was perfect," Tom said.  "The rods feature wonderfully sensitive, fast action tips that provide all the sensitivity required to maintain continuous contact with the jig, while at the same time minimizing the chance of thread breakage by absorbing the shock of a hook set or unexpected run.  The blanks are strong enough to stick the hook, yet limber enough to resist tearing the crappie’s soft mouth tissue—and the combination of light line and heavy bodied tungsten Marmooska’s allowed us to slice our presentations through the water and get our baits down to the fish quickly, before they could move out of striking distance.  We simply dropped the jigs down until they were about two feet above the fish, then began quivering the baits to attract their attention.  Once they committed and began rising toward the lure, we continued working the bait while gently lifting it up at a speed slightly faster than the fish were coming after it.  This resulted in an aggressive response and triggered some ferocious strikes.  The ice is here and I’m lovin’ it!  ‘Til next time."  

 'Til next time, indeed!  

 Happy New Year, folks!