The sad news is, we’ve had roughly a total of 10 to 14 days of safe ice the past two years here in the Chicago suburbs. The good news is less shoveling, a longer boating season, and more open-water fishing for the average angler—but I miss the ice. So, I did what any reasonable person would do and arranged a 10-hour drive to Upper Red Lake, Minn.

I contacted a good friend who had recently moved near the lake and was guiding there, and she said the bite was hot! With less than 24 hours before we were supposed to leave, a 60-degree rainstorm pounded the lake for two days. It looked like the ice season was over. However, two weeks later, Mother Nature gave us the cold spell we were looking for. Ice fisherman rejoiced! We were going to be able to fish after what had been the worst ice season in recent memories. I called Andy, the owner of FishDaddy—the title sponsor of the MWO Podcast—and asked if he wanted to film. He was all in.

After a long drive, I arrived at West Winds Resort, met my friend Caitlin, and she took me out to my sleeper house.

Andy and his son Joseph made it up just shortly after, we had a quick pow wow over what baits to use the next day while we let some minnows soak on the rattle reels. We would soon learn that it didn’t matter what bait we had on; if it glowed, it was getting eaten.

Sunrise the following morning illuminated the sky, and the mission was on: Find the pelagic crappies of Upper Red Lake. Our guides Tyler and Caitlin met us, and we began to look. I had never had so much appreciation for electronics in my life. It was a three-step process to find these fish.

Step 1: Listen to the guides. They told us we needed to find basins and keep moving.

Step 2: Use forward facing sonar to locate the schools of fish.

Step 3: Once found, keep the fish biting/engaged. These fish never stop moving, so if you want to do more fishing than hole drilling, FFS is crucial for this kind of fishing. In fact, the fishing was nothing short of world class if you were able to present your bait directly in front or above the schools. However, if you were even 12 inches behind or to the side of them, you wouldn’t get sniffed. After the dust settled, we had a three-man crappie limit and had filmed a TV segment in a record-breaking time. It’s true bliss when everything comes together so smoothly.

So, what did I take away from the day? Even on such a remote body of water where there are no electrical outlets to be found, technology stole the show.

First off were the FishDaddy baits. With the use of LED lights inside the jigs and spoons, we were able to keep fish engaged longer, and would get bites much faster, than the anglers around us. Second was a graph, not just any flasher or graph, but live imaging. It is crucial to see where the fish are, the direction they are traveling, and how they want the bait presented. Joseph and I broke our crappie personal bests and we all made lasting memories that day.

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