Intrepid ice fisherman shares tools and tricks

Rob Moore is a typical outdoorsy kind of guy.  He hunts, he fishes, he hikes.  “I love to fish,” he said. “Whether it’s from a boat or on the ice, I just love it.”

“When I was just a boy living in Cooperstown, I fished behind Bassett Hospital,” he said, before divulging a sportsman’s secret. “That’s a perfect spot for fly fishing and salmon fishing during the summer. As a matter of fact, I learned how to swim in that lake.”

Mr. Moore’s father taught him how to ice fish on Lake Otsego when he was young.  “My father and I were out on the ice and the first thing I did was catch a sunfish,” he said. “That got me hooked.”

Mr. Moore left Cooperstown when he was ten years old in 1971, moving west to the San Fernando Valley.  He taught scuba diving and did a lot of spear fishing for 15 years, then moved on to construction before he moved back to this area in 2010.  He is a now a local construction contractor.

“I’ve always loved fishing, any kind of fishing,” he said. “Typically, any fishing is better either in the mornings or evenings, both ice fishing and boat fishing. You have to be all about safety on the ice.”

Being ‘all about safety’ means a careful routine for Rob Moore and anyone wandering out onto a frozen lake.

“First, we take a ‘Spud Bar’ to the ice,” he said. “It’s a steel rod with a chisel on the end of it. You slam that on the ice three or four times to see if it breaks through the ice.”

“The rule of thumb is for a person, the ice should be a minimum of three-and-a-half inches thick. If you have an ATV or snowmobile, it needs to be six-to-eight inches, and a car needs 15 inches minimum,” Mr. Moore said.

After the safety check, he said, you get your gear and walk out on the ice. “I have a tent, heater and chair, so it’s pretty comfortable in the hut and out of the wind. You can use a type of fish radar if you want to locate schools of fish, then you start drilling holes in the ice. The holes are six-to-eight inches in diameter.”

He continued, “You’re allowed to drill seven holes — five can be tip-ups, a little device that sits on the top of the ice and raises a tip to let you know you have a fish.”

The other two holes use ‘short rods’ meant for ice fishing.

“Short rods are about one-third the size of a normal rod,” Mr. Moore said. “You still get a good fight from the fish with these rods. When you hook a fish, they don’t just come up easily through the hole in the ice.  They swim from side to side and can get locked up in grass or rocks, so it’s tricky.”

The experienced angler uses live bait for ice fishing.

“Flat heads, suckers, shiners, small mineral fish, meal worms and night crawlers work the best,” Mr. Moore said.

Area lakes also dictate which bait to use based on the depth and types of fish.

“Canadarago Lake is shallow, 35-40 feet,” he said. ”You’ll find walleye, perch, and bass there. But Lake Otsego goes to 160 feet deep — that’s where you get the good lake trout because they are colder-water fish. Because of the depth of Lake Otsego, you’ll find a better variety and a broader spectrum of species.”

It can also be tricky out on the ice if you don’t know what you’re doing.

“The only time I was really scared was in the very beginning of my ice fishing career,” he said. “When it’s really cold, the ice “grows”, it makes this wicked cracking and groaning noises. I thought I was going through the ice, but when ice “grows”, it actually makes the ice thicker and stronger.”

“The worst part about ice fishing is pulling up a tip-up without gloves. If you have gloves on, you can’t feel the fish on the other end—you can’t feel where it’s going so you can predict what to do,” Mr. Moore said. “By the time you get the fish through the hole, your fingers are frozen.”

“The best part is being out in nature and catching fish; it makes me happy. It also helps that I don’t mind being cold!” he said.  “It’s all about the fishing and the challenge.”