ICE FISHING IN MACKENZIE BC

All of the lakes around Mackenzie BC are full of fish, and ice fishing is a very good way to catch them. If you decide to go ice fishing in Mackenzie BC, there are several ways to go about it. If you live in town you already know that you can go ice fishing in the morning and skiing, or sledding in the afternoon or you can go sledding to the lake and go ice fishing.
If you live within a few hours drive of Mackenzie, which means you live in Prince George, Chetwynd, Dawson Creek or Ft St John you can go to Mackenzie for the day and get in some great ice fishing. You will find several places to eat and a gas station so you can fuel up and if you decide to go the picnic route, you will also find a couple of grocery stores to stock up on your favorite foods and snacks.
If you are coming from further away, you may want to plan for a three or four day weekend. You will want to have a day to travel to Mackenzie, and another day to get back home and 1 or 2 days of fishing. I you decide on the long weekend trip there are rooms available at the Mackenzie Inn Hotel.
The best lakes to fish on a short trip to Mackenzie are Morphee Lake and Gantahaz Lake. These two lakes are easily accessible from town and are full of fish. Morphee Lake has a healthy population of Rainbow Trout, Lake Trout and Bull Trout. There have been several Lake Trout caught in Morphee Lake in the 20 pound range. In more than a few cases the fishermen were quite surprised to find that the hole they had cut in the ice was not big enough.
Gantahaz or Leech Lake is located a few miles North of Mackenzie on the road to the rural sub division. If it is not plowed out, you can walk in, or skidoo in for the short distance. This lake has a very healthy population of Brook Trout and catching a 3 pound fish is not unlikely. These fish are like footballs from feeding on the plentiful leech population in the lake.
As with any ice fishing trip you can keep it really simple or you can go high tech and take lots of gear. If you fish mostly on lakes that have other people fishing them, you can get away with a very minimum of gear. All you really need is your parka and snow pants or a skidoo suit and warm boots, your line, some bait, and an axe or bar. Put all of your gear in a 5 gallon pail and you will also have a place to sit while fishing. Since you will be using holes drilled by someone else, you will need the axe or bar to reopen them.
You can of course set yourself up with lots of gear and make your ice fishing trip a very comfortable experience. When you want to take lots of gear you will need a skidoo and possibly also pull a sled to carry everything. If there is not too much snow you may be able to get away with using a quad or in many cases you can also drive your truck or SUV on to the ice. Be careful when taking your truck out on to the ice. Especially if it is late in the season. I have seen more than one truck that was going through the ice or had to be retrieved from the lake in the spring.
Here is a list of the ultimate ice fishing package;
• A skidoo or Quad made by one of the most popular manufacturers like Arctic Cat, Skidoo, Polaris, Yamaha.
• A sled to carry all of your gear.
• An ice auger. There are several on the market that are either motor or hand driven.
• Ice fishing lures, rods, and bait.
• A shelter. You can get several on the market. Everything from a small 1 man emergency shelter to a shelter that will house up to 12 anglers. And on some lakes you will see a bunch of wooden shelters on skids that are actually small cabins with all of the amenities.
• A fish finder with an ice transponder.
• GPS unit to plot your location so you can come back to the same spot later.
• A heater and a propane tank.
• Portable camp chairs.
• If you really want to get carried away you can also take along a satellite dish and a flat screen TV. My attitude is that if I want to watch TV, I will stay on my couch instead of going ice fishing.
• Beer fridge
• Portable Generator.

Making Your Own Fishing Lures

Lure Making-What tools do I need.

The art of Lure Making can be divided in to 3 different categories. Spinners and jigs, plugs, and flies. Each category has its own set of skills and although there are several common tools, each category has its own set of unique tools.

One of the most important things common to making any kind of lure is to have a place to work. The work space should be sturdy, and have enough room to actually do the work and keep your tools close by. The ultimate set up is to have a whole room that you can devote to your lure making activities. But most of us don’t have that luxury, and make lures or tie flies on the same work bench we use to fix carburetors, or a broken lamp.

The next issue is storage of materials. Spinners and jigs have lots of small parts and you don’t want to be looking through parts scattered all over the bench. A set of plastic parts drawers will fill this need very well. They come in several different sizes, some of them slide together to make large arrays of bins, and they are inexpensive. You will also want to have some sort of bowl or tray to catch the strays. For this purpose I often use a margarine container. It is big enough to contain a lot of spare parts and small enough to reside almost anywhere on the bench. It also doesn’t tip over real easily.

Some of the variety of parts you will need to store will include, but is not limited to:

• Spinner blades
• Wire forms
• Split rings
• Beads
• Crimp sleeves
• Clevises
• Hooks
• Swivels and snaps
• Rubber Skirts
• Lure bodies
• Propellers

 

This list will expand to meet your requirements and as your skill level increases.

To help us contain the small bits and pieces, it is also nice if the work bench has a lip around the outside edge. This will help prevent beads, sleeves and other small parts from rolling on to the floor and disappearing into the carpet or under the work bench.

One of the truly unique tools used to make spinners is the wire former. This tool forms all of the stainless steel wire that is used as the back bone of a fishing lure. You can do the forming with a couple of pairs of pliers, but the wire former will make your life a lot easier. It takes a bit of practice to learn how to set up the former and use it properly but it is well worth the effort to learn how to use it. If you are making Walleye jigs or Bass jigs you may also want to invest in a wire coil former tool.

Some of the other tools you will need to build spinners and jigs will include split ring pliers, needle nose pliers, channel lock pliers, chain nose pliers, and jeweler’s pliers. You will also need a pair of crimpers, and a pair of sturdy wire cutters.

Depending to what extent you want to take your lure building you will also need a ball peen hammer, several punches, a sturdy pair of metal shears, a drill or drill press. Also in the nice to have department is a grinder with grinding wheels and buffing wheels. You may also want to have a small gas torch for the odd soldering job. It is also nice to have a vise handy to help you hang on to your work when you are putting that perfect twist in to that new proto type lure you are developing. If you are going to build your own jigs you will want to have a melting pot and forms for metal. If you decide to make your own plastics, you will want to have a set of forms. You can either buy these or make them.

If you decide to build plugs, you will need a whole different set of tools. This category of lures is different from building spinners in that it uses a lot more power tools. This category also uses different materials and components. The small parts bins are still handy to store the small parts but there are fewer of them. You will want to have some bins or shelves that are a bit larger where you can store blocks of wood and Styrofoam.

You can build plugs completely using hand tools, but like building anything it is much quicker and quite often results in a much nicer product if your use power tools. If you are cutting your own plug bodies, you will want to use a band saw or a scroll saw. You can use a coping saw, but again it will take a lot longer. For the final shaping, you will want to use a sander. The best type to use is a bench sander. You can also use a rasp and sandpaper. If you are going with a full compliment of power tools it is hard to beat a Dremel tool with all of the possible cutting and shaping heads that are available.

In the hand tool department it is always nice to have a set of rasps, files, and sandpaper handy to take care of any high spots or imperfections you find in your creation as you go through the construction process. You will also want to have a sharp knife of carving set available for those final touches.

If you are building tubular plug bodies and you are doing lots of them, you may want to invest in a small wood lathe. This handy tool will make short work of the shaping process and will allow you to do several bodies in a very short period of time. You will also need a drill or drill press to pre-drill all of holes for your screw eyes.

To complete your plugs you will want to add some paint to them. I once saw 2 hand carved, hand painted plugs that were 30 years old. A lot of the paint had been worn off from catching fish and rolling around in the tackle box. But the paint pattern and color was still visible. The thing the impressed me about these 2 plugs was that they had just caught a pair of 20 pound Rainbow Trout at the same time. I can only hope that a plug I make will someday catch a trout that big.

The other way to paint your plugs is to use an airbrush. With this nifty tool you can add spots, stripes, slashes, and eyes, whatever you want. The paint scheme will only be limited by your imagination and your skill with the air brush.

The third category of fishing lure making is fly tying. Your storage requirements for this category are again different. You will need some of those small parts bins but you will also need a set of drawers to store hackles, capes and such.

There are not very many power tools associated with this category. But you might want to use a glue gun or a heat gun to help you complete the construction of a few of the patterns you may choose to build.

The most common tools used for fly tying are;

• A Fly Vise
• Scissors
• Hackle pliers
• Bobbin
• Nippers
• Dubbing twister
• Bodkin
• Whip finisher
• Shears.

It is also handy to have a craft knife or scalpel on the bench for miscellaneous cutting jobs. As you tie flies you will find better or different tools that work more efficiently for you.