Downsizing for icing winter walleye

In the pre-dawn hours of a cold January morning, I shuffled through the snow in the driveway to warm up the truck. It didn’t start easily, even with the block heater plugged in. I remember thinking to myself, as I glanced at the outside thermometer and saw it read -28˚C, “Should I be doing this?” From past experiences, I knew getting out early was the best bet for good walleye fishing, so I erased any thoughts of going back to bed. An hour later, the familiar sound of a two-stroke gas auger coming to life inter­rupted the quiet sunrise on northwestern Ontario’s Minnitaki Lake. It was too cold to run-and-gun, so I drilled a couple of holes in front of my flip-over ice hut and hoped that I landed on some fish. I climbed inside the hut, fired up the propane heater, and dropped my transducer down the hole. With the flick of a switch, the flasher whirled to life and colours lit up the screen with two distinct marks just off bottom. “Bingo!” I said aloud, having a good idea of what was going to happen. Downsizing delivers The next two hours can best be described as what ice-fishing dreams are made of: hungry and aggressive walleye smashing lures. Watching the flasher screen, at times I could see two fish rising up to greet my bait, before feeling the telltale thump of a solid hit. The bite was on. No matter what I put in front of the fish, they ate it, and I hadn’t even opened up my bag of minnows. As quickly as it all began, though, it ended. They stopped as if someone had hit an off switch. I kept marking fish, but they wouldn’t bite. Live bait didn’t help, either. The marks on the flasher would inspect my offerings and simply sink back to bottom. No ques­tion, I’d already had a great day and could have packed up then and there, but part of me wanted to solve this puzzle. I’d caught a lot of fish that morning on a large horizontal jigging bait. I had the same one in my panfish box, except it was the smallest size made. I tied it on, sent it toward bottom, and watched the flasher screen. Just as before, a thick red mark appeared below the bait. This time, how­ever, the mark didn’t sink back to bottom; it