Saturday will be a good day to go hole-hopping on backwaters of pool 9. Travelling light. Just a scoop, electric auger & a couple of 36″ poles in the bucket towing the small sled One pole will have a chartreuse/pink head custom Jigs & Spins Demon on it.

The Demon is most effective when fished horizontally. This means you have to slide the knot after every fish to make it so.

I almost always use plastics on my pannie lures. But Saturday i’ll have a couple of crawlers left over from gill fishin’ back in october. “Garden hackle” is often more effective than a waxie or a couple spikes when you’re just looking to get your string stretched.

One nice thing about living on the River is you can get out for as long as you want whenever you want. With a forecast high in the 40’s, simply gotta go.

I haven’t guided ice fishing in almost 10 years. Only get out fun fishin’ when it is possible to travel light.

The ice guiding gig ended after i crunched the numbers. To make the effort worthwhile you need to guide at least 4 clients, drilling at least 6 holes per client, through at least 2′ of ice 4 X 6 X 2 = enough weight to plant at least one telephone pole.

Besides a gas powered auger, the trip required 4 Vexilars, ice scoops and at least 10 ice rods..plus lunch, heaters & other stuff.

No live-target sonar back then. Fish had to be located the old fashion way. When the parade of at least two sleds behind the ATV arrived on station, the equivalent of planting a telephone pole was completed & all clients received a quick course in sonar use ang jigging technique—with an ambient temp of maybe 20 degrees–at least one client would ask why he wasn’t catching any fish even though red marks on the Vex said fish were down there.

When I realized my ears would get frostbit wearing a top hat with a rabbit under it with social security & medicare cards in my wallet–under 6 layers of clothing–I finally realized i was like the guy who spent all day beating his head against the wall cuz it felt so good when he quit.

A couple years after that i had the same epiphany pulling a Fish Trap tent a mile across the ice through foot-deep snow. My 1st Fish Trap was GREEN. Bought it from Dave Genz when fishing Mille Lacs about 1980. Berkly had just come out with a Lightning Rod for ice fishin’.

An ice fishinig spinning rod is not necessary for at least 70% of productive pannie water on Upper Miss backwaters. Ditto electronics. When you see a red blip headed toward your lure, most of the time you’ve already missed the bite. Not taking your eye off a wiggling spring bobber which suddenly changes cadence puts more fish on the ice at the end of the day.

Which brings us to the Demon. A gold Chekai tungsten jig drops quicker, finding the fish zone about a foot off the bottom quicker. BUT a slow falling, horizontal-rigged Demon has pannie attention from the time it drops under the ice until it waffles down to the fish.

Back about 1980 I was fishing the Madison chain of lakes a lot. A lure called the Little Atom was DEADLY on gills. I relayed this to Bill Klingbeil who used to own CJ &S long before Walt & Poppy or Bob Gillespie

At season’s end i sent Bill the only 2 Little Atoms I had left (one had a broken hook). He made a mold, and the Demon was born.

Back then there were far less than a dozen effective ice lures. The Candy Stripe & Rembrandt worked well for crappie. Gills liked the Little Atom & Dot. Perch jumped all over the Dot rocker & rat finkee. Of course, all species would hit any of these lures. The Swedish Pimple caught a lot of walleyes and was a perch killer, too.

Since the Demon was born, ice fishing has truly evolved into fishing’s 4th season. Genz used to hype his Fish Trap tent as his “winter bass boat’.

Investing in a bunch of hi-tech year is probably a good idea if you fish mostly lakes and are serious about the sport. But if the Mississippi River is out your back door and you’ve spent a lifetime pullin’ a plow its more fun light-footing across the ice when weather is a friend and not an adversary