Exploring new lakes and finding the fish

[jam1324]

I am very new to ice fishing but do have a lot of experience fishing soft water. I was just wondering what everyone does when they get to a new lake they know nothing about?

After hanging around here for a couple weeks I have figured out the etiquette I think and it's not good to ask people where fish are so sorry if I offended anyone in any of my previous posts around those topics. Is it alright to ask about technique to find them yourself? I am way more than willing to put in my own legwork I just want to minimize banging my head off brick walls and be doing something efficient and not wasting time. I always have my 8-year-old son with me in tow and sometimes my 6-year-old which can make things even more work when trying to find the fish.

Me and my son are just picking back lakes at random basically and doing day trips. What we have been doing after researching a lake and finding any info we can is trying to find some structure, drilling a row of holes about 20 feet apart for 10 - 15 holes and then working down the holes moving every 5 - 10 minutes if we get no action in one. After we finish a row of holes we move over 20 feet to the side and drill another row of holes. In theory at some point, we will find fish and then stick on them until the bite dies. We do try to find ledges, points, basins etc to drill on instead of just flat out drilling the entire lake.

I notice if there are other people around fishing they just seem to stick on one hole the whole time they are out there 6+ hours sometimes and I am wondering if I am making much more work for myself by drilling 50-60-70+ holes and moving around a lot or do you all think that increases the chances of finding fish?

If you see on the Ontario fish site that a certain species was reported in lake x and you go there how many times will you go back before giving up on catching species x and lake x and decide its time to try a new lake?

We have a big map of Ontario that we are planning to fill up with info, writing on each lake what we discover etc, hopefully, one day it will be very detailed.

Hope everyone has a happy new years!
Jamie

[oogie8]

Finding fish can be very species specific

[Jstubbs]

What I do (depending on depth) for this - is if you're in shallow enough water (10 feet or less usually) and you can see enough of the ice - look for the clear spots in-between spots that are white/lighter (full of bubbles/oxygen) - the bubbles are from plants and the clear spots usually mark a sandy bottom or at least a spot with nothing growing there that's in between all those weed beds - IMO one of the best places to drop a bait into for many species - in my experience this has been my best technique on spots/lakes I knew nothing about -Puslinch lake, but Rondeau bay especially - landed my PB pike (37 in) with no electronics or knowledge of the bay - and every other time I used that rule of thumb I caught "something" and usually did fairly well and never used electronics and was just winging it.

Second thing is, DOWNLOAD the NAVIONICS APP if you have a smart phone and data on it. For like 15 bucks a year you can see a detailed depth and contour chart of almost any lake - by looking at this you could pick out some spots to consider based on contour lines, possible current flow, humps, holes etc. long before you head out and all while having a beer at home on your laptop. That's what I'm doing for my trip in February to Cook's bay (first time) here's the site to take a peak: https://www.navionics.com/

Third thing you will likely be told is to move around until you find them. That can be a good trick. Ironically though I've had some of my best days waiting them out and I've heard simcoe is a lake you can wait them out on - so that's more preference I think and whether or not you're walking lol

Fourth and most obvious is once you get there see where the other huts are - and use that as a starting point. Also try different depths and try to have a few different presentations on until you find one that works (again kinda obv but I'll say it anyways lol)

IMO navionics will be your best friend for this plus if you DO find a good spot, you can mark it for later/the next day super easily

[Jstubbs]

Also I presume you have navionics as well but you never know lol

[jam1324]

Thanks for the detailed post some good tricks in there. We have navionics and a garmin chartplotter. Navionics was huge help over the summer figuring out the dangers under the water for my boat it is such a great app for the price. We hit a couple lakes that don't have any contour lines or depth info and what I did was drill out about 75 holes when we got there and ran around dropping my transducer in each hole for just enough time for it to draw the map on my chartplotter. We then had a quick pow wow to pick out what looked like good structure after I drilled out and mapped 500x500 feet. I will pay more attention to bubbles and things like that under the ice on future trips for plants etc. We arent being to picky on what we catch we just fish! My son really wants to find Crappie and that is kinda of our winter goal and I am super pumped about lake trout and whitefish on Simcoe. In the meantime tho a fish is a fish is a fish! I will keep moving around on the smaller lakes then, I was worried it wasnt the right thing to do.