Greg Frey
Amidst the growing polarization of our society in the Obama-Trump-Biden years, it may surprise no one that the editor of the Record-Eagle has received two threats over pieces he has run. What may surprise you is they were not about politics but fishing, one piece in particular about ice fishing. Now on the one hand, that may seem disturbing. But on the other, there is a message of hope. At least two people in northern Michigan take fishing more seriously than politicians. When you step back and think about it, that’s a pretty healthy thought.
Still, I don’t want to face threats. So, after reinforcing my compound and bracing for the onslaught, I’ll say it. There are walleyes in Walloon. To borrow a quote from Broadway’s Hamilton, “So Mr. President, if ya’ didn’t know, now ya’ know.”
Now, there’s not a lot of them, and they’re kind of hard to find. In fact, they almost have to find you. But when you do find them, it is SO satisfying. All jokes aside, it’s no secret there are walleyes in Walloon Lake as there are in numerous other northern Michigan lakes. The important thing is the lessons learned from walleyes on Walloon apply to ice fishing any lake, including yours.
Last winter, I began searching for them. With COVID gripping the world in a chokehold, our men’s hockey league was put on hold as were most weekend travel plans. So the best place to travel became the nearest frozen lake. Drew Oliver, my friend and fellow fly-fishing guide from Boyne Outfitters, and I began the season on Thumb Lake, fishing for perch. My immediate problem became the procurement of bait. The closest bait shops that sell minnows are a good half-hour drive north or south from my home. That’s a problem if you want to get up early and fish before the bait stores open. Either way, it’s no fun spending an hour on the road just to get a dozen minnows. Thus began my first experiment of the season. Why not just use nightcrawlers from Meijer? Granted, tradition says to use worms in the summer and minnows in the winter, but I’d gladly eat a watermelon in December or a hot plate of beef stroganoff in July. Why should fish be any different?
They are. With Drew fishing minnows and me fishing crawlers, the perch on Thumb Lake clearly preferred minnows at roughly a 4:1 ratio. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but those are perch. They’d probably choke on a crawler. What about a walleye? I wasn’t about to give up on my experiment so easily.
Our next trip found us on Walloon where I had fished for seven years without catching a walleye. And I knew how to catch walleyes. Jigging for them in a glacial lake near Gaylord and up in Ontario, catching was never a problem. Heck, I even caught them one time by tipping my jigs with gummy worms. Find the weed beds and you’d find the walleyes. However, Walloon doesn’t have many weed beds. What it does have is sand flats with extreme drop-offs. So Drew and I went to one of those.
Following advice from my old boss who uses this strategy on Lake Bellaire, I pulled out my phone and opened the Google Maps App. Then I switched it to satellite view where it clearly showed Walloon in all its summertime dark blues and aquamarine with a little blue dot where I was standing. Drew and I began hiking a half mile to a much steeper drop-off down the shoreline. When we were on the edge of it we spudded new holes, our shallowest tip-up being in about 9 feet of water and our deepest being in 40. We spudded two holes within easy conversation distance in about 25 feet of water.
An hour or so of jigging, and the crawler thing wasn’t working out. I switched over to a mid-sized minnow on my size 3 Swedish pimple jig while Drew tipped his much smaller Swedish pimple with only the head of a minnow.
Finally, as twilight crept over the lake it happened. Just a light bite but a consistent one like the gnawing of a small mouse on a piece of cheese. Try as I might, I couldn’t hook the fish. Thinking it was a small perch, I turned to Drew.
“You might as well try to catch this thing with your little jig. At least we won’t get skunked.”
We switched holes, and within ten minutes Drew shouted in surprise as his small ice rod doubled over. Soon enough, the head of a big walleye broke the surface and by some small miracle, Drew managed to slide the 22-inch fish onto the ice without breaking his 6-pound line. Shortly after, a flag popped on one of the tip-ups in 35 feet of water, and an equally healthy walleye joined the first one on the ice.
It was a long walk back to the landing in the dark, but it wasn’t hard to see. We were beaming the whole way.
Lessons Learned
Walleyes, at least the ones on Walloon, seem to hit our jigging rods more often than tip-ups. They bite lightly, so don’t be fooled into believing you’re dealing with a school of small perch as I was. For some reason, they seem to hit more readily on a small jig than a large one, especially if that small jig is tipped with only a minnow head as opposed to the tail end of the minnow or even the whole minnow. The bite window may last only 30-45 minutes before dark.
So often we are conditioned to believe that if we’re not catching fish we’re in the wrong spot or using the wrong lure. Not true. Winter walleyes are nomadic hunters. They’ll let you know when they’re around and hungry. We only catch them about every other trip. But if you never got skunked, it wouldn’t be quite as exciting when you didn’t.
With 27 years experience teaching all subjects to fourth and sixth graders, Greg Frey is a jack of all trades and a master of none. With 52 years experience wandering around in the outdoors, his hunting and fishing skills follow a similar path. When he masters the skills of the outdoors, he’ll take up paddle ball. He hopes that day never comes. Based on the fact he’s genuinely surprised when he catches a fish or spots a deer, it probably never will. He’s good with that.
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