Photo by Ron Sinfelt

By Tom Berg

Every year, Hoosier ice-fishermen hope for a few arctic blasts between Christmas and New Year's Day to set the annual season in motion. Once the ice reaches a thickness of 4 or 5 inches, many anglers will don their snowmobile suits and heavy boots and head for the lake. Others will wait for the security of 6 to 8 inches of ice before declaring the lake "safe," but they all have one thing in common: They all love ice-fishing.

Last winter was a more "normal" winter for most Indiana ice-anglers, with the first ice appearing in January and lasting through most of February. In the northwest part of the state, the first really frigid weather appeared on Jan. 6, when the temperature dropped to 7 degrees below zero.

The temperature stayed relatively cold for most of the rest of the month, and then during the last week of January the ice-making machine turned on full blast! The temperature dropped below zero every night for five nights in a row, culminating in a minus 10-degree reading on Jan. 31. That makes for some thick ice!

Ice-fishermen took advantage of the good ice during late January and through the middle of February. There was not a tremendous amount of snow cover, and the fishing was good. But by the third week of February, daytime highs were hitting the mid-40s, and most of Indiana's icefishing was gone before the month was over.

It's anyone's guess as to what the weather will be like this winter. Hopefully, the ice will appear early and stay late. But even if it is a normal winter, the ice-fishermen will be chomping at the bit to get out on their favorite waters or try a few new spots.

Although there are hundreds of great places for Hoosier fishermen to choose from when deciding where to drill their first ice hole, Indiana Game & Fish has identified five excellent places to fish to help narrow your choice. They include: Blue Lake in Whitley County, Adams and Oliver lakes in LaGrange County, Bruce Lake in Fulton County and Fish Lake in LaPorte County.

Blue Lake has a maximum depth of 49 feet, and there are plenty of weeds of all kinds for the fish to hide in. Shallower wetland areas along the northwest and northeast sides of the lake commonly attract good numbers of fish and fishermen. There is a public access site on the south side of the lake with plenty of parking for ice- anglers.

Even though Blue Lake does not cover a lot of surface acres, over the years it has produced surprising numbers of very large panfish - especially bluegills. The most recent creel survey performed by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) recorded bluegills up to 10.5 inches in length, and dozens of 'gills measuring between 9 and 10 inches. Those are some hefty bluegills!

Yellow perch and black crappies have also been favorites at this lake in the past, and fish up to 12 inches (of each species) are not uncommon. Largemouth bass are also quite popular with anglers here, and there are some real trophies present, too. Creel clerks observed bass up to 20 inches long during their survey, and DNR biologists collected bass as large as 21.5 inches during their night-fishing sampling efforts.

Ed Braun, a District 4 fisheries biologist for the DNR, agrees that Blue Lake is good place for Hoosier hardwater anglers to try their luck. "It is very popular with ice-fishermen," he said. "The bay in the southeast corner is a good fishing spot, and it usually freezes early." Although that particular bay has water about 12 feet deep, it is quite weedy and produces great bluegill catches.

Blue Lake has not been surveyed in the last few years, but the fishing is still very good. Bluegill fishermen, in particular, have still been catching good numbers of the really big bluegills. "I don't expect any big changes in the fish population," Braun said. "It remains one of the better bass and bluegill lakes."

Neil Ledet, a District 2 fisheries biologist for the DNR, reports that Adams Lake is good place for Indiana hardwater fishermen. "It's got really good bluegill fishing," he said. "The ice-fishermen like to hit the bluegills during early ice." One of the early- season hotspots is in the channels, in 5 or 6 feet of water. "Just south of the access site is a series of channels. First ice in those channels can be really terrific."

Bluegill fishing can be fast and furious, at times, and there are plenty of hand-sized 'gills to be caught, too. During the last fish survey at Adams, bluegills up to 9.6 inches were collected. "Many of them are probably in the 8-inch range," estimates Ledet.

"Adams has also traditionally had quite a good yellow perch fishery. There are some nice perch in there. The guys who catch perch follow them around all winter long, since the schools move around quite a bit. They are fishing for the perch in 25 to 35 feet of water, right on the bottom."

Although some perch are caught on bee moths, the preferred bait is a live minnow. "From what I've seen," Ledet said, "it's mostly a minnow fishery. But they also use small minnow-imitating jigs. They put a spike or two or a wax worm on the treble hook, and with that they can cover a lot of ground."

Bass fishermen can do pretty well at Adams, too. "It has decent bass fishing," Ledet said. "But I don't see a lot of people fishing for them through the ice. Everybody used to put out a tip-up or two when they were out on the ice in the past. I think attitudes about bass have changed so much that not many people are doing it here."