A hot spot for ice fishing..........by Eric Sharp
There's a "wisp" of smelt visible through the hole in Rod Denley's ice fishing shanty on Higgins Lake. That's his term for a handful of the little silvery fish, but a few minutes later it has increased to a "mist" of about 100 moving slowly from west to east.
We're hoping that mist will increase through Denley's two stages: a "fog" of 2,000 or more, and finally a "cloud" of smelt filling the water column from bottom to top and feeding steadily on scuds and other tiny creatures wafted to the fish by the current.
Denley's shack is set up on the edge of a sandbar in about 12 feet of water with a drop-off to 60 feet about 30 yards away. It's a spot that attracts a lot of perch along with the smelt, and while he doesn't see many northern pike to take a whack at with his big steel spear, the pike he does see tend to be much bigger than the average for this lake, or the state, for that matter.
His most recent pike was a 41-incher that weighed 16 pounds, 5 ounces, considerably smaller than the 44-inch, 22-pound, 4-ounce northern he speared in 2010 that was the No. 4 pike on the state's master angler awards list.
Denley fishes the south end of Higgins Lake, one of the biggest, clearest and deepest inland lakes in the state and one that offers a large variety of game fish because of its incredibly varied habitat.
In addition to shallow-water species like pike, walleyes, sunfish and perch, Higgins also boasts a good population of smelt, and big lake trout, brown trout and rainbow trout that feed on smelt.
I like to set tip-ups for rainbows near small feeder creeks on the north end of Higgins Lake, accessible from the state park of the same name. The creeks don't provide good spawning sites, but the 'bows don't know that and hang out near the creek mouths in February, and we often fish minnows in 18 inches of water under 6 inches of ice.
Denley found his winter spot a dozen years ago by examining satellite photos of Higgins Lake.
At nearly 10,000 acres, Higgins Lake offers a lot of water, but much of it is very deep. The deepest spot is about 130 feet, and Denley said he has found perch as deep as 70 feet late in the winter when dissolved oxygen levels in the water are low.
Michigan's list of master angler awards makes it clear that winter is the time to fish for big pike, and that while relatively few people are spearers, that technique is the most effective.
The minimum weight for a catch-and-keep award is 18 pounds, and 19 fish made the list in 2010. Thirteen of the master angler pike came through the ice, and eight were speared.
Sitting by a 2 1/2-by-4-foot hole in the ice where he could see every pebble on the bottom, Denley said, "I have electronics that I can use for ice fishing, but when you're spearing pike, it just comes down to this, waiting and staring into the hole."
On this day not much happened. The smelt spent a lot of time staring at the lures, and even though we changed them several times, none of the fish would bite. We also saw a half-dozen perch and caught two.
"We did really well on perch for five or six days, then it just shut right down," Denley said as we packed to leave. "And the smelt really surprised me. There's been a cloud of them under us every day, morning and evening. Not today.
"But like I tell people, that's what ice fishing is all about. If you're not out there when the fish do come, you won't catch them."
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