Just like everyone else, I enjoy a picturesque shore lunch of pickerel/walleye after a nice session of drifting a worm harness over a weed bed. There’s something to be said about being able to catch and harvest the same fish that the public pays an arm and a leg for at the local Sobeys. Don’t get me wrong… I would never turn down a spring Walleye, but there are so many other species that a lot of anglers are missing out on. They might not be as great of table fare as a Walleye, but not many fish in the world are, so let’s take that out of the equation. My point is, the term rough fish is based on the prospect of eating the fish. With angler mindsets shifting from filling the freezer, to preserving the resource, I think the world of rough fish angling is due for an explosion. There are so many opportunities to target these species & if you are someone who wants an Ontario record one day (like me), you have the first mover advantage. Just my two cents.
In these next few parts, I will go through some of the unexpected catches I’ve had the past few years, accidentally caught or not. I have a few years of material saved up as I haven’t been as active in writing as I should have.
Ice isn’t everyones cup of tea, but in my mind you are able to try out much more technical types of fishing. Having accurate bathymetric mapping is absolutely massive when ice fishing. By the time you set all your junk up, it’s hard sometimes to move multiple times especially when there is a foot of slush. That’s where the mapping comes in. If you are able to find a somewhat accurate map, you can put yourself right on the fish depending on the target species. On this particular day in early Winter, I just wanted to feel the tug of anything on my new ice rod & just to wet the whistle so to speak. It was a small lake stocked with Lake Trout, has a bunch of Cisco and no mention or record of Burbot.
The lake has some pretty sheer cliffs down into the maximum depth of about 75 feet. I knew that Lake Trout often use sheer cliff faces to corral baitfish. I set up right next to the cliff face in the deepest part of the lake. In my experience, stocked Lake Trout are very mobile around the lake and figured I would get some chances. I dropped down my secret lure and it didn’t take long to get on to this nice stocker Lake Trout. Put-Grow-Take, sounds great to me.
Using my sonar, I had begun to notice huge schools of baitfish covering the top 25 feet of the water column every so often. I figured that these were Cisco roaming around. Cisco will act interested in your lure and sometimes will take a nibble. I was lucky on this one, as it committed and shortly after, it was topside on the ice. I love catching Cicso as when they are on the ice, they flop at such a high cadence, it reminds me of Wicked Tuna. Not to mention their scales that shed from not much more than a light breeze.
The final part of this story is something unexpected. As I mentioned, there was no record of Burbot being in this lake. I don’t think this is overly rare as they are often forgotten about and I doubt were even being looked for in surveys. Another thing is that they are bottom-oriented. Like Channel Catfish and others, the netting sets in surveys are discriminatory to bottom-dwelling fish and they are often undercounted in the overall biomass counts. Using the same lure as previous, I saw a mark on the sonar that looked like it was glued to the bottom. I stopped my high jigging cadence meant for Lake Trout and focused on tapping the bottom. All of a sudden, something snapped it up and after a short trip, a Burbot appeared at the hole. This was my first Burbot and is so memorable, because it wrapped its long tail around my arm as I was trying to take the hook out. They are a remarkable fish with a single whisker on the bottom of their jaw and such a unique look to them. Forget what you have heard about rough fish, because Burbot are one species that has broken through the glass ceiling of edibility. Poor Man’s Lobster is a common name that people use for the meat, but having had lobster in my life, I wouldn’t take it that far! Love these fish, but that is a high bar to meet.
I also caught a Rock Bass in 75 feet of water, but clearly it did not make the final photo. Some rough fish deserve the moniker and are set free to live another day. You can see the final products in the gallery as well, noticing the bright orange meat of the stocked Lake Trout. It’s always cool seeing the different colour depending on the diet of the fish. Is catching a Lake Trout, Cisco and Burbot from the same hole some sort of new Grand Slam, or the Holy Trinity of cold-water fish species?
One last note is that my friend Matt’s phone made it’s way to the bottom of this lake as well. The Lake Trout have a phone to look at while corralling bait against the cliff face & I had a nice dinner. Giveth and taketh away, or something like that?
Keep Casting,
Nate
Ontario Angler 