Ice Fishing for Bass with Gord Pyzer
One of the most heated debates any hard water angler can have is whether or not smallmouth bass should be targeted through the ice during winter months. If we rewind a few years ago, many of us wouldn’t haveeven hesitated to fish for bass through the ice, but today that is a much different story.
The Manitoba Bass Anglers recently had the opportunity to sit down with Gord Pyzer who had worked as a senior manager with Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources for thirty years. Known in a lot of fishing circles as Dr. Pyzer, he has knowledge and insight into bass biology that not a lot of us have.
Q: Do you fish for bass during the winter months, Gord?
A: No, I don't. There are plenty of other species I fish for during hardwater season.
Q: Why is it so harmful to catch bass in the winter?
A: Most anglers know about what happens to the swim bladder (Barotrauma) – It balloons and pushes the stomach out of their mouth, creates pressure on vital organs and inhibits the ability to swim to the bottom which is dangerous on its own. What happens internally in the bass is even more detrimental and anglers never see it as the fish swims away and appears healthy. Nitrogen enters the blood vessels, they hemorrhage, the eggs and testes are bruised and damaged and the fish expend energy that is critical for them to survive during the starvation period of winter.
Q: What is different between fall and winter fishing for bass?
Gord Pyzer Senior Manager — Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources
During the fall months you catch the bass out on the tops of humps or hanging just off the sides typically in 23-28 feet of water (1 atmosphere of pressure is equivalent to approximately 34 feet) and this is less harmful to fish so long you released them immediately and do not move them. It’s when the ice forms and those fish slide off the edges of that structure down to the bottom, in typically much deeper water, where the rock meets the mud that they stay until spring (Typically more than 1 atmosphere deep).
Q: Your official stance is that we should not ice fish for bass, but is there any way that an angler can help mitigate the damage done to bass during winter months?
A: Dr. Mark Ridgway is a good friend and heads up the ONMR Harkness Research Laboratory in Algonquin Park. As Mark always says, "there are no redeeming qualities ice fishing for bass or targeting them when they are spawning." If you catch one by accident in the winter the key is to immediately release it. As I mentioned previously, much of the damage caused by barotrauma isn’t the visual swim bladder, it’s internal. The blood vessels, egg sacs and testes can hemorrhage and rupture, it’s the nitrogen being forced into the blood and the blindness in their eyes. You can’t mitigate this once it happens. And never forget, only one third of northern range male bass spawn in the spring and those fish were predetermined last summer. So if they're gone come spring, nothing will replace them.
Even though bass may be the one species we are all overly passionate about, perhaps fishing for them in winter is not the greatest idea. There are some amazing facts and statistics that can point to a fishery and species being successful in constantly producing world class fish. Any one who watches competitive tournament bass fishing will know the names Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie, Lake Simcoe, the eastern end of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. They produce mind-blowing, massive bags year after year. And guess what, they are the only locations on Earth where they close the bass fishing during the winter months and the spawn on the Canadian side where all of those bags come from. Coincidence…? That’s up for you to decide. Gord had a closing statement that is daunting on many levels – “You get the fishery that you deserve”. It appears that in this case, unfortunately, the few can ruin it for the many.