Ice Fishing: How to Lose Your Patience in Just a Few Minutes
Savitaipale, February 10th, 2018.
We’ve been planning to try ice fishing at Lake Kuolimo for a few days now. In Finland, ice fishing is a very traditional pastime, and it makes sense since most of the year is cold and everything is frozen. The most common places to fish are at the center of lakes or in the mouths of bays.
Today, we finally got the necessary gear for ice fishing, so after work, we headed to Lake Kuolimo to give it a go. One question we had was whether it was legal to fish anywhere, but it seems that in some areas, no license is needed.
How to Start Ice Fishing
As a general rule, you have to drill the hole at least 15 meters away from the road. If you make the hole too close, it can become bigger and cause an accident. We picked three spots near buoys so we could sit on them while we waited. We already knew we’d have to wait a while…
The first thing we did was drill the first hole with the auger. To our surprise, the ice was quite thick, and we had to put a lot of force into making the hole. I thought the ice would crack and widen as we drilled, but that wasn’t the case. To make it bigger, we had to insert the auger into the hole and pull it out to remove the water, so it wouldn’t freeze back over. Otherwise, the hole would slowly start to freeze again.
Preparing the Hooks
After drilling the first hole, we set up the rods and drilled two more. The more chances we had of catching something, the better. We had three good rods, so we hooked the bait and dropped them into their respective holes. One of my friends tried adding Avecrem (a type of seasoning) to the water to attract the fish. Honestly, I’m not sure if it worked…
In the ice fishing bag, there were a type of handles that you could use to grab onto the ice if you fell. If you fall into the freezing water and try to get out, it’s nearly impossible to hold onto the ice because it’s too slippery, which makes getting out much harder. Plus, you freeze right there, and there’s no time to do anything.
And then we wait…
So, we made the holes, set everything up, and sat with our rods waiting. Minutes passed, and nothing happened… In theory, dawn and dusk are the best times for ice fishing, when the fish are more active. We sat there with our rods until it started to get dark. Personally, I got tired of waiting and went home after a while, but my friends stayed for another 20 minutes. It was freezing cold, and ice fishing really tests your patience since you can spend hours and hours without catching a thing.
As expected, today’s ice fishing was a bit of a fail. Plus, after researching online, we found that the time we went wasn’t the best for fishing. However, we’re planning to return another day around midday to try again. Hope springs eternal!
