To Hop or Not To Hop

Guardian Angler

A Quick Guide to Maximizing Catches when Chasing Schooling Fish Through the Ice.

Temps have plummeted; your favorite lakes and rivers have turned into frozen tundras covered in ice and snow. You have hung up all your open water gear, turn to your freezer to grab a bag of fish to cook for dinner, and that’s when you see it, your freezer stares void of fillets at you. You’re heartbroken, hungry, and downright disappointed in yourself for letting this happen. What do you do? Time to hit the hard water.

    Most of us in my area enjoy filling our freezer with Perch, Crappie, and Bluegill when ice fishing. (Those of you lucky enough to have good local populations of pike and walleye, this article might not be for you) I constantly see one mistake from these anglers that can be a game-changer in your days out on the ice, hole hopping in locations that are holding schools. Bluegill, perch, and crappie are all schooling fish that like to roam basins, weedlines, and flats that hold good forage. Oftentimes, people hole hop, to "chase" these fish around these locations in order to try to maximize catches, but this often becomes more work than it’s worth. These fish don’t follow a specific path, rather, they move erratically. They are chasing vibrations under that water that call to them, running from predators, following scent trails or disturbed bottoms that tell them prey is nearby. You can't always predict when and where these fish will be. Once you find a location that is holding schools, I've found it is best to hunker down, pop up the shanty, and wait for them to come back to you.

     As someone who runs graphs and forward-facing sonar out on the ice, I've followed these fish around when they are making their moves. I've tried chasing them around in basins and flats in attempts to stay on top of them. Oftentimes, I've found that if I drill a new hole on top of these schools, they spook off and immediately run away from where I just dropped. After being frustrated for hours, continuing to chase and drill, I started running back into my old holes. Once I got back to those old holes, I began catching fish out of the schools. After a couple of catches again the school moves on, but not to the hole I thought they would move to, and the wild goose chase begins again. From there it became a game of cat and mouse, jumping from one random hole, to another, and another until I got lucky and got close enough to catch a few lingering fish. Again, they just kept moving, and I was finding that I could not pattern where they were going. So cold and tired of running, I hunkered down and popped up the shanty. After getting the heater going and some hotdogs cooking over it, the graph lights up like a Christmas tree. A SCHOOL CAME RIGHT TO ME! I spent a good twenty minutes plucking fish after fish out of the ice. And slowly they faded back out. I then realized in those twenty minutes I had caught more fish than the few hours I spent chasing them around the grid I had drilled around me.

     I spent the rest of the day in my shanty, with the schools coming through every half hour or so. I was warm, tearing up the fish, and quite happy with the day’s haul. Throughout the day, I'd see other anglers doing the same thing I did earlier, chasing fish in my old holes (as well as new ones they would drill), and the story was the same. A few fish here, a few there, but never a point they had a constant bite where the school was sticking around them. I couldn't tell you if the sound of people walking around spooked them, or if it was the vibrations of transducers being dropped over top of them, or a combination of both, but it seemed the moment you would find the school they would push off again. I however, had them coming through quite regularly on their roams. Not only that, but they would spend a bit more time under me, slowly moving past. Hole hopping, those schools were moving abruptly, as soon as I found them they would be leaving. I continued to test this all that winter.

     All winter, the story stayed the same, whether I was deep (over 15ft) or shallow. Once I located an area holding schools, I'd turn it to Swiss cheese, scattering holes in a big gridlock pattern over the structure I was fishing. From there, I'd use the livescope to locate the hole, the nearest school was by, and I would go fish it. If I was lucky, I’d get a handful of fish from the school, but more often than not, I'd pluck one or two stragglers, and the school would be moving on as I'd be dropping my bait. After a bit of hopping around, I'd set up my shanty in one of the holes I had already drilled. From there, I'd get warm, eat, and wait. The schools always seemed to come through again in the shanty, they would move through much slower, the fish were much more eager to eat, and my haul to take home would grow significantly. 

     This leaves things down to one specific question...To hop or not to hop? For me, it boils down to one thing. Are there schooling fish in the area I'm in? If the flat I’m out on isn't showing me signs of a school, I’m not setting up shop. I'll drag my sled over to the nearest basin, point, river bed, or weed line and look there. The moment I see schools moving through the lake structure I'm on, I'm immediately setting up the shanty. I will fish in the shanty for up to two hours and wait for a school to roll through, and if one doesn't, now it’s time to hole hop again. Sometimes fish that were in the weeds decide to move to deeper water, or sometimes they want to hold tight to submerged cover like sunken timber, or rock piles that I may not be set-up on. You never want to waste too much time on dead water, but moving too early might not give the fish a chance to move to you. I've found two hours seems to be the best time limit to give up on a spot and chase them down again before resetting the timer. 

    Whether you prefer the comfort of the shanty, or the rugged feel of the bitter winter on your skin, hopefully this article helps you put more fryer friends top-side. It’s a rule I follow anytime I chase panfish through the ice. Try it yourself, and it might make a world of difference for you. As always, feel free to wet us a line at degeneratefishhippies@gmail.com with any questions, and I'll be sure to help answer them to the best of my ability. 

Tight Lines.