Ice fishing is nothing new on Lesser Slave Lake, but it does seem to have a new popularity. That’s what avid ‘hole hopper’ Jim Jarvis says, and he’s been paying pretty close attention since moving to Slave Lake from Vancouver Island about 10 years ago.
“It’s grown a lot,” he says. “There used to be one or two huts out off Widewater – now there’s 20 of them.”
Indeed there are – stretched out in a line above what fishermen call ‘structure.”
Structure means some kind of change in the topography of the lake bottom. In this case it’s a drop-off from relatively shallow inshore water to the greater depths further out. That’s where fish hang out, apparently, and it’s where you might find a concentration of boats in the summer.
But it’s not summer, and it’s a bit of a mystery (to the non-ice fisherperson) why anybody would spend hours out on a frozen lake, often in brutally cold conditions.
Jarvis attempts an explanation. “It’s relaxing,” he says. “It’s out in nature. And (getting closer to the heart of the matter) you never know when a big one might be coming up. It’s like playing the lottery.”
“I like this lottery better,” pipes up his frequent fishing buddy Darryl Courts, from a hole about 30 feet away.
Jarvis doesn’t use a shack because he can’t stand being restricted to one location. He’ll drill a line of holes running from the shallow to the deeper water over the drop-off. Then he sets himself up on a bucket, drops his baited hook (usually with minnows) the bottom and starts jigging. If nothing strikes within a few minutes, he changes holes, and keeps changing them all day. Some days nothing much happens. Other days, his numbers come up.
“One time out at Assineau Bay three of us caught eight-pound walleye (he’s got the picture to prove it.)”
On windy days, the bucket stays in the truck and so does Jarvis, sitting on the seat with the door open on the downwind side.
“The wind’s your biggest enemy,” he says.
Snow can be a problem as well, such as the time on Assineau Bay when Jarvis and several other fisherman got stranded when heavy snow started to drift.
“We couldn’t get out – the snow was grill high,” he says.
That’s when mobile phones come in handy.
“Lenard Dick came out with his skidder and pushed a road through,” he says.
Ice fishing can be considerably more comfortable. Plywood or OSB shacks with a stovepipe sticking out are a pretty common sight all along the south shore of the lake these days. Some are pretty basic and some – like Gil Fiddler’s – boast quite a few luxuries. Fiddler’s hut (can’t call it a shack) stands out immediately due to its satellite dish. The dish means he and his buddies can fish and watch hockey games at the same time as enjoying a meal and a drink.
The wood stove in the corner ensures they’ll stay warm no matter how cold it gets outside. Five hatches in the floor lead to five holes in the three-foot ice.
Fiddler says he got into ice fishing only about five years ago. He tried it, liked it and immediately built himself the hut.
Like the other huts, his is on skids with a hitch. He tows it out early and hauls it off late and enjoys lots of comfortable ice fishing in between.
That’s quite a different game than the one Jarvis plays, but for the avid ice fisherman being comfortable is somewhere well down the list of priorities. It must be.
“I come out every weekend,” says Jarvis. “I love it.”
Fishing in a shack isn’t always comfortable. One of the less well-constructed ones blew away and then apart in the big windstorm of Mar. 9, Jarvis says. Not that there was anyone in it when it happened, but there could have been.
As for the fish, walleye is the one most people go after, and the only one Jarvis seems interested in. Unfortunately for him, the commonest species out of the hole is the burbot, also known as ling cod. He puts them back in the lake, but some other people just toss them on the ice. That’s one reason you can see wolves and coyotes out on the ice sometimes, cleaning up the discarded fish.
Burbot is ugly, but tastes just fine according to some fishermen. Fisheries Biologist David DeRosa encourages its use as a sport fish, hoping that if anglers discover how good it is, it’ll reduce pressure on the walleye.
“It’s a sweet-tasting meat,” DeRosa says. “Better than walleye.”
DeRosa has noticed the growth in ice fishing over the past decade. He says his department is considering its impact on fish stocks and is looking at various management measures if the trend continues.
“The biggest issue is the depth,” he says. “The problem is when you bring a walleye up from that depth the air bladder expands two or three times. That’s why you see it sticking out of their mouth.”
When that happens, DeRosa says, “it’s pretty much a dead fish.”
DeRosa says he’s particularly worried about the concentration of winter anglers at the Narrows. One Saturday last winter there were 150 out there. That’s fishing pressure. The number of shacks all along the lake is also at an all-time high.
“There’s about 100 on the east end and up to 200 on the west end,” he says.
One of them is DeRosa’s own shack, off Canyon Creek. He’s all for the sport, but thinks for it to be sustainable in the long run, there will probably have to be some restrictions on where it can take place.
“For conservation purposes they’re going to have to move their shacks to shallower water,” he says.
The ice fishing season on Lesser Slave Lake closes at the end of March. Jarvis and other keeners will be out every chance they get until then, jigging for that monster walleye.

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