Catch lake trout through the ice—anywhere

In my opinion, there’s no more rewarding through-the-ice catch than a lake trout. Ontario offers endless opportunity to catch this species, which makes a home in everything from small, deep natural lakes to behemoths like Lake Superior. The allure of Salvelinus namaycush is not only its size and beauty, but also its range. Lakers can be found an hour’s drive or less from nearly anywhere. During summer, they stay in cool, deep waters, making them difficult to access for many anglers. In winter, however, lakers live in all depths of the water column, giving anglers many more square kilometres of productive water to target them. This makes lake trout a very accessible species for anglers looking to cure those winter blues. Screen plays The excitement for me in lake trout fishing on ice greatly involves the use of electronics. Lakers can certainly be caught without sonar, but the excite­ment of watching a fish aggressively chasing your lure on the screen feels like playing a video game — where the final boss is a 40-inch trophy lake trout. Here’s how I videogame fish for lakers: The dead stick: Enticing a laker can start with a technique as simple as a dead-sticked lure. On 2D sonar, a dead-sticked lure will appear as a motionless line. Dead-sticking is a simple and very effective method for piquing interest from a laker. Jigging: If dead sticking doesn’t work, “yo-yo” jigging — simply moving the lure up and down — is the next thing I try. It will look like the lines on a heart-rate monitor on your screen. In most cases, fish appear below the lure and rise towards it to take a curious look. This is when I start to slowly reel the lure away from the fish. If the fish speeds up, I keep reeling at a constant speed and watch the fish converge on my lure. It may not be that easy, though. Just before a strike, you’ll sometimes see the fish turn away and drop back to the depths. This is when the game of cat and mouse begins. Open your bail and drop the lure back towards the fish and watch the sonar. The fish may swim up to hit the lure on the fall, or chase the lure as it drops below them. Detecting the bite on a falling lure is much more difficult than a tight line. You