Ice Fishing for Herring in Barrie

This is my fifth time ice fishing this year. So far I've caught ZERO fish. That's right. No perch, no lake trout, no walleye. Nothing. I even woke up at 5:30 AM one Tuesday morning so I could squeeze in some time on the hard water in Haliburton before work. But the fish don't care how hard you try and what sacrifices you make.

That's the beautiful thing about this sport: it forces you focus on what you are doing and what you will be doing - not on what you did or didn't do - because failure is always knocking at your door. Sometimes even when you're well prepared. So there's no time to dwell and no time to think about the fish that could have been. 

I start the day at The Bait Bucket. After receiving some very helpful tips, I decide to fish just outside of downtown Barrie. Huts dot the horizon. By this time of year, I usually start thinking about ditching my 6" manual auger. The ice is thick. I put a minnow on a drop-shot rig in about 30' of water. An old man passes and tells me I'm too deep for perch and too shallow for herring. He tells me to use a silver jigging spoon. A few minutes after he walks away, I catch my first fish of the hard-water season: a small perch.

Still, I trust the old man's judgment, so I make my way into deeper water. Off comes the drop-shot. On comes a Doctor Ice jigging spoon from January's Mystery Tackle Box. I tip it with a minnow. I'm rewarded almost immediately with another perch. And then, my first Lake Simcoe herring.

As I jig, I realize that the fish aren't necessarily at the bottom of the water column. In fact, many are in the upper half. My biggest herring of the day comes somewhere between 10 and 20' feet down in 40' of water. Smelt litter the bottom, and predators are waiting to smash the ones that stray from the pack.

Perch and herring fry

After four hours or so, I call it a day. For the first time in months, I have that peculiar feeling of satisfaction. And it's increased tenfold because I get to share my bounty with someone ethereal. The smile on my face is a reminder that while failure is always knocking at the fisherman's door, so too are success and redemption.

Greg Cholkan is a lawyer, fisherman, and Hemingway impersonator. He works in Huntsville and Haliburton with Barriston LLP and his practice focuses on real estate, wills and estates, and corporate matters.

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