Ice Time Splake

For ice fishermen, splake offer some of the most fun ice fishing that’s imaginable. Hatcheries crank out most of these crosses between male brook trout and female lake trout, although in some cases the splake, unlike most hybrids, can reproduce with other splake. Biology aside, consider that both Mom and Dad are native char species that stay active in even the coldest water, and you have a fish that bites under the ice willingly—and then fights, pound for pound, like no other.

“You hook into a 15-inch splake and you think you’ve got a four-pound walleye on,” says touring pro walleye angler Mark Martin, a Michigander who targets them through the ice off his home state’s Upper Peninsula in Lake Superior. Several states including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine have had active stocking programs in deep, cold lakes; check stocking records online to find potential splake lakes with the mother lode. Look for stockings within the past three years—these fish grow fast, attaining 18 inches within just a couple years after being stocked as fingerlings. They can grow big, too, and the largest one recorded was taken by spear gun in Saskatchewan, and weighed more than 25 pounds. On most splake fisheries, however, anything bigger than five pounds is worth a picture.

Two techniques work particularly well on ice. Either let a lightly-hooked minnow swim free underneath an unattended “dead rod,” or try jigging.

Martin says both methods can work equally well and often sets a spinning combo baited with a minnow down about halfway in the water column. He likes six pound fluorocarbon line and a number eight treble hook (red Daiichis are faves), barely impaling the minnow in the skin of its back to help keep it alive and active. He sets the rod in a holder designed to keep it from sliding into the hole, and leaves the spinning reel bail open, with a loop of line held in place with a rubber band on the rod’s foregrip. When a splake eats the bait and swims off, the line pops free—whereupon Martin grabs the rod and sets the hook.

While the bait soaks, he actively jigs with another rod rigged with a small jigging spoon or swimmer such as a Jigging Rapala or a Northland Puppet Minnow.

“Most of the time you can target the upper half of the water column—splake will come a long way up to take a bait,” says Martin, who also uses a flasher sonar unit to keep track of where his bait is, and of approaching fish. Lots of times splake show up as a thick bar by his bait, and then disappear.

“They come in fast and miss the lure a lot,” he says. “When you see that happen, slow the bait, just jig it an inch or two and the splake usually comes back and hits it.” And a splake hit has all the subtlety of a freight train.

Lake Superior’s Copper Harbor is a prime ice fishing destination. Guide Larry Smith (906-289-4481) knows splake hotspots, so give him a call if you want to go splake hunting this winter.