It took about an hour to get the feel of Lake Mendota’s ultralight-hitting perch last Saturday, and then the fish began coming in.
Not in limits of 50 in an hour, as arm-sore guide Kevin Monk occasionally experiences. In our case, it was more like 22 in a few hours on a supposedly slow day–enough to learn Monk’s electronic “Star Wars” ice-fishing technique.
The method works so well–especially in Mendota’s deep perch waters–that Monk has strained a rotator cuff setting hooks into fish.
We were playing the game in Cadillac style, within a heated, mobile rental “ice shanty” that easily accommodates eight anglers. A dozen holes had been drilled in a line between facing rows of benches. Parkas, hats and gloves were piled beside us despite an outside temperature no warmer than 10 degrees.
We luxuriously stretched our legs in the 8-by-10-by-8-foot enclosure shaped like a miniature double-wide trailer, swapped jokes, sipped pop and studied a pair of Vexilar electronic sonar flasher units that accurately enabled us to jig our tiny lures right to any fish through an immense column of 74 feet of water.
We were on the perch beds a mile off Mendota’s Governor’s Island, maybe 2 1/2 miles from the picturesque University of Wisconsin campus across the lake. We got there on a plastic sled pulled by a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle with chains on balloon tires. This is the “coach” of choice in view of Mendota’s ban on conventional cars and trucks, despite ice 14 inches thick.
Gene Dellinger, the bushily mustachioed proprietor of D&S Bait & Tackle, said safety is the main concern of county officials. Mendota apparently has too many ice heaves and unstable ridges to accommodate heavy vehicles with confidence. Ice fishing for deep-water perch on Mendota therefore becomes a problem for anyone without an ATV or snowmobile. The only alternative is to hike, hauling your tent and other gear at least a mile or two.
“People do it, but a lot never try,” Dellinger said.
That’s why he went into the ice-shanty rental business this winter, becoming, he thinks, the first Wisconsin entrepreneur after Norton’s Guide Service on Green Lake to offer ice shanty setups for the public.
Dellinger has a team of guides who scout perch movement and move his homemade shanties into hot-spot positions. They drill the holes, ignite a propane heater and fire up a generator if electricity is needed for lights, circulating fans or a portable television.
For a $100 minimum or $30 per person, clients can be dropped off with their own bait and fishing gear to be retrieved at an appointed hour. For another $100, they can be provided with a full-service teaching guide, complete with rigged rods and electronics. The former is an ideal setup for a group of seasoned anglers who desire an easy outing. The latter best serves inexperienced couples or parents who want to try the sport or expose children to ice fishing without any rigors and without having to spend a fortune on exotic equipment.
Furthermore, a guide is likely to see that kids will catch some fish–unless they just want to run around the middle of the lake while older folks do their thing, which is OK by Dellinger.
“I think a family could have a ball out here with only a bunch of ice fishermen around,” he said, mindful that Lake Mendota is a far cry from the notorious ice village that winters on Minnesota’s Mille Lacs, complete with street signs, vendors and occasional hookers on snowmobiles.
Dellinger was leery about our scheduled visit last Saturday amid the coldest snap of the year. “It’s going to be miserable,” he fretted.
The high barometric pressure also had turned off fish for as long as a week. Dellinger was afraid we might catch nothing.
But the weather was breaking, and even the ride out was comfortable without any facing winds. Monk, a scruffy, reformed hippie and former motorcycle club rider who brags that he once “mooned” the Abbey on Lake Geneva on Mother’s Day, already had contacted active fish.
In his seven years of guiding for Dellinger, he has perfected a method of electronically reading all that takes place in the water beneath a shanty.
The method is deceptively simple and easy to learn. A half-ounce metal weight–Monk uses homemade coat hangers attached to an aluminum disk, while Dellinger sells copper tubes–is connected by two-way swivels from a 4-pound-test line to a 4-pound monofilament leader, tipped with a No. 12 or 14 Ratfinkie ice jig. A pair of tough-skinned live grubs called “spikes” are hung upon the hook to attract perch, which now feed on massive suspended populations of daphnia, or water lice, that hatch in the bottom mud.
These rigs are dropped through ice holes from 36-inch ultramicro fiberglass rods with ultralight spinning reels, and the metal weights can be seen on sonar units as they are reeled up and down through the water. It’s sort of like playing a video game, with the reward an actual fish.
We were parked above mud beds 74 feet below. Although our sonar units could not mark clouds of daphnia forage, they did show fish flitting beneath us at 42- and 60-foot levels. We dropped our baits accordingly, watching their images flicker on the flasher screen until they came into play with the fish. Then it became a matter of watching rod tips for tiny signs of movement, a sign that perch might be nuzzling the bait.
“Even when they’re hitting good, they bite light,” Monk explained. “You ordinarily never feel the bite. The hard part is teaching a new guy how to notice a strike. You have to see it on the rod tip. And then you have to set the hook immediately. And you have to set it hard because of the tremendous line stretch when you are fishing this deep.”
As if on cue, Monk jerked his little rod almost to the ceiling, its sharp bend confirming he had caught a fish. He winced at the strain in his shoulder. This was a new kind of sports injury to me.
“When they’re feeding heavily, they come one after another,” Monk said. “You get your jig down as fast as you can.”
Dellinger said extra rods, fully rigged, then become necessary. “If you break off a jig or snarl a line, you don’t have time to fix it,” he said. “It gets to be like a gunfight. You’ve got to have your weapons ready.”
Dellinger said sonar flasher units, which can cost up to $300, are vital when ice fishing in deep water.
“If you can’t see where the fish are, you’re fishing blindly,” he said. “You can’t get your bait to them. It would be like confronting 74 holes drilled in the ice, with fish under only one. Which hole do you choose?”
There were no more than 50 shanties on the lake where we were last Saturday, and the only occupants who reported decent catches were those who used electronics. It’s a state-of-the-art method that takes much of the luck out of ice fishing.
Of course, there are times when fishing is so good it’s hard not to catch something. Mendota’s shanty population then grows into the hundreds.
“You know, if a guy could sell brats out here on days like that, I’ll bet he could turn a thousand dollars,” Monk said, pensively scratching his beard.
“And he still could do some fishing.”
Mendota’s ice-fishing season should last at least until early March. For shanty rentals, call 608-241-4225.
