Goodenow finds plentiful perch

[Spiel]

Goodenow finds plentiful perch

 

 

January 18, 2008

Will Elliott / buffalonews.com

 

 

There is always some new thing under the sun when it comes to learning about what goes on under the ice.

 

A chance meeting with Silver Lake ice-fishing devotee Warren Goodenow last week led to some interesting observations too numerous to shoehorn into the shag end of last week’s ice-fishing summation.

 

A 14-pound walleye and better numbers of keeper-sized perch from Lake Simcoe were both good news. Invariably, reports about each day on the ice unfold differently, and — despite extensive study and decades of field experience — some new things come along well worth learning and doing.

 

When longtime friend and fellow fishing fanatic George Dovolos introduced me to Goodenow, it was obvious that Goodenow was a good guy for ice-angling info.

 

We had an open field out there for ice options that morning, with good bluegill along the shoreline and some nice perch prospects out over depths of 30 feet or more at mid-lake near Mack’s Boat Livery.

 

Dovolos deferred to Goodenow and we headed out to the deeps to pick on the perch. Out there, we met up with Dick Wolfer from Fillmore, another regular with a bountiful bucket of perch paraphernalia — and a few nice perch in the pail to prove it.

 

This threesome hits the ice every hour possible and works shallow and deep to get over sizable schools of sizable fish. On this day, they keyed on perch, and I had the good fortune to fish amid this triangulated trio.

 

While I have the right auger, snow sled, all-weather suit and a bucket full of stubby ice rods with all kinds of lures likely to allure fish at Chautauqua or Simcoe, Goodenow immediately took me under his tutelage and handed me his version of an ice rod.

 

Nearby, Wolfer and Dovolos kept pulling reams of runts and an occasional bucket-worthy perch.

 

Goodenow wanted me to see exactly what was going on down there. I didn’t have to bring out a sonar device. He had me use his newer model of a Vexilar flasher rig.

 

“Underwater cameras are nice for looking at fish, but you can follow their moods,” Goodenow said as he set up the program to show on a circular screen both the overall depth and a zoom-in view of depths just off bottom.

 

Videos and graph-screen models work well for viewing fish movement, but this Vexilar, a unit that’s been on the market for at least a decade, offers the classic flasher-screen program of a Lowrance “Green Box” and the modern technology of sensitivity and target distinction under the water/ ice surface.

 

All this is important because Goodenow plans all his approaches with small and light baits.

 

“I like to use ‘plastics’ [rubber/vinyl jig bodies and tails] on small heads,” he said as he opened one pocket-sized lure holder he estimated to hold $200 in small, specialized ice jigs.

 

The lot probably didn’t have one head weighing more than zounce. Every ice angler knows the difficulty of getting to the bottom and then feeling the lure hit bottom in deeper water.

 

While I was using his sonar unit, Goodenow began fishing a circle of holes he had drilled with a battery-powered DeWalt drill he fitted with an open chuck that could lock onto a 4-inch ice auger.

 

Even cooler was his skill at reaching bottom with his light jigs — he switched us to 1-pound test line when the fish stopped biting –and picking just the right tap or hang on the line to set a hook into the bigger ringbacks out there.

 

“I like to experiment with colors, shapes and sizes,” the 47-year veteran ice angler said as we tried to dodge the runts and set hooks on bigger perch.

 

I sat there looking at a sonar screen that showed me when a fish was swimming by, when it was chasing my lure upward, and the relative size of the prey.

 

But Goodenow got into the bigger perch along with the reams of runts that held on the sonar screen throughout the mid afternoon.

 

“I’m getting the bigger fish when jigging high off the bottom,” he said while lifting overhead to tease another big one.

 

This scene gets repeated on every good perch lake and bay every ice season. Goodenow’s array of light-tackle gear — rods, reels, lines and mini baits — would be good on lakes such as Chautauqua, Simcoe, Honeoye, Erie or in bays such as Braddock, Sodus or Irondequoit.

 

Goodenow willingly shares his success “secrets” that have placed him high in regional and national ice-fishing tourneys. This year, as a member of Avon Anglers, he helps in coordinating five ice contests on area lakes. For details, visit avonanglers. com.