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BY BILL THOMPSON

SPECIAL TOTHE CHRONICLE-JOURNAL

Sometimes when youre fishingfor walleye in February, it can be thelittle things that make the differ-ence.

Yes, the first-ice bite has come andgone, and now many anglers aredealing with the annual mid-seasonwalleye doldrums.

Case in point, recently my fishingbuddy Ronny Bauman was jiggingtwo of his favourite minnow-tippedbaits in two holes, and to no avail.When hunger and frustration tookits toll, he reeled in both baits andgrabbed a sandwich.

He then hooked a small minnowon a 1/8-ounce jig, dropped it downone of the holes, and plopped the

outfit on a bucket. In short, he wasnow deadsticking.

As simple as it looked, it wasdeadly. Bauman had a spring bobberon the tip of the rod and his reel wasspooled with red braided line, andtipped with a half-metre-long fluoro-carbon leader.

The jig hook, which ran just un-der the skin and parallel to the dor-sal fin, was pointing towards thehead of the minnow.

As a result, if his bait moved,someone would see the brightly-coloured line move or the springbobber quiver. And the direction ofthe hook would increase the odds ofa hook set.

Before he swallowed the first biteof his sandwich, the spring bobberdropped ever so slightly and Bau-

man lifted the rod, watched the tipslowly bend down, and then set thehook on the days first walleye. Andthen another, and another.

All the while, Bauman failed tonotice Danny Williams, the othermember of our three musketeers,just behind him, jigging a RapalaClackin Rap a lipless crankbaitthat comes complete with an inter-nal rattle.

That in my humble opinion, wasthe little thing that made the differ-ence. It completed the one-two com-bination. A live target golden shinerwould have worked as well.

In this case, Bauman was only

half of the strategy. Williams actual-ly was calling in the fish. And whilethey didnt hit his noisy decoy, itgrabbed Baumans minnow danglingabout half a metre from the bottom.

I must admit that we didnt evenknow of this tactic, until we attend-ed an ice fishing seminar presentedseveral years ago by Gord Pyzer, inwhich the Kenora resident referredto the combination of a liplesscrankbait being jigged close to adeadstick, As the deadliest one-twocombination for walleye on ice.

He also pointed out that the dead-

stick set up also works well, in com-bination with a flash lure like TheWilliams (no relation to DannyWilliams) Ice Jig, their Nipigonspoon, and the blue fox tingler, orwith the horizontal presentation ofa Rapala Jigging Rap.

We later added the northlandbuck-shot rattle spoon and theswedish pimple to our flash lure lineup, and the rapala jigging shad andsnap rap, along with the salmo chub-by darter and the nils master jiggingshad, to our horizontal presentationlist.

At the same seminar, we learned

that walleyes can be moody, aggres-sive and passive, and all in the sameday. Knowing the fishs mood can becritical.

And as amazing as it seems, witha little practice, it can be determinedusing electronics, whether it be witha flasher or a sonar unit.

In short, when you use one ofthese devices but especially thezoom option while ice fishing, youcan actually see your bait, and thefishs response or lack of it.

Either way, theyre a fantasticlearning tool, as well as a confidencebuilder. And youll never forget thefirst time you see a fish streak acrossthe screen to your lure or bait.

That said, it would take more thana few paragraphs to deal with thesedevices in depth, so I recommend

you hop on the Internet and look forice fishing electronics. Lowrance,Humminbird, Vexilar and Marcumare popular brands.

Water colour and your timing canalso be critical at this time of theyear.

While smaller, darker, tea-coloured bodies of water may offerwalleye action all day, youre betteroff concentrating on the low-lightconditions of dusk and dawn in theclearer bodies of water.

In addition, customizing yourbaits can result in a higherbite/catch ratio.

For example, more and more an-glers are removing the treble hookson their jigging spoons and substi-tuting a stringease fastach clip or achain rig in its place to make thehook ride lower.

As Pyzer explained, When a fishhits, most of them actually inhale itlike a gold fish. And if they dont likeit, they can spit it out so quickly, youmay not feel anything.

However, with the hook hangingfarther below the spoon, you create apivot point, so there is a far betterchance of the hook swinging like apendulum and penetrating the fishsmouth.

Yes, a big ticket item like a snazzysnowmobile would help, but quite of-ten its the little things that you cando that can make the biggest differ-ence on ice.

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PHOTOS BY GORD PYZER

Liam Whetter, 11, of Kenora, caught this walleye last weekend on Lake of the Woods.

Deadliest 1-2 comboHere are some tricks to beat the walleye doldrums

Gord Pyzer of Kenora caught this walleye in Manitoba using adeadstick presentation on Lake Winnipeg.

DYNAMIC FOREST

Followforestindustrys

goodexampleBY MAC SQUIRES

ARE the things that disturb usabout current harvestingmore a result of the har-

vesters behaviour than of the silvi-cultural techniques being used?

Much of our concern about tim-ber harvesting is based on memoriesof practices that were current yearsago, but today are rare.

Lets look back four decades.I recall in the early 1970s partici-

pating in national conferences of in-dustrial foresters in which we re-

flected on rising public criticism ofour practices. We knew that mediaand public perceptions were basedon a mix of truth and somethingelse, but in the publics eyes percep-tion was reality. We asked ourselves,Are we able to make a difference?

The industry was counting on usto propose ways in which it could im-prove its image. Many of us pro-posed to our employers that we open-ly confront our faults and correctthem.

Through the 70s it remained easyto see careless practices on harvest-ing operations anywhere in NorthAmerica. Some of the more obviouspractices included: ignoring fuel andoil leakage or even dumping oils onthe ground; abandoning broken ma-chinery and parts; leaving broken

and retired cable where last used; ex-cessive bulldozing of extractionroad rights-of-way and landings;causing soil erosion and stream sil-tation by blocking drainage withpoorly constructed roads, culvertsand bridges; using machinery instreams, leaving merchantable logsthat were lost from skidders to rot oncutovers and piles of harvestedwood to rot at roadsides; and, ofcourse, not ensuring regeneration ofharvested areas.

This waste of resources and thenatural environment had been pub-licly condoned and attempted im-provement even impaired by waver-ing official public policies from thebeginning of timber harvesting, butby the late 70s it was clear that citi-zens now cared and they were no

longer going to tolerate carelesspractices. Our faults were exposedfor all to see and the industry was be-ing hurt in its markets.

Objective self-examination forcedus to admit that there was much wecould do to improve. As lobbygroups pressure on our world mar-kets and media attention intensified,our industry began to respond.

To help guarantee wood supply,industry requested and successfullynegotiated forest managementagreements in which they took re-sponsibility for forest managementon their licensed areas. During theearly 1980s things began to change.

Harvested areas were now subjectto independent forest managementaudits, which opened investors and

managements eyes to the fact thatthere was much truth in our criticsclaims.

My employer empowered itsforesters to draft a forest manage-ment policy, followed by a policy onall of our behaviour in the naturalenvironment.

After corporate approval of the fi-nal documents, they were made pub-lic and applied to company-wide op-erations. Our executives made itclear that all employees from the topdown were accountable for livingthose policies.

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