People who don’t go ice fishing very often might question the effect that weather has on catching fish through the ice. But most ice anglers agree that weather can significantly impact ice fishing success. They know that some types of weather make fish under the ice want to bite, while types of weather spoil their appetites. If you can be a bit flexible and go fishing when weather conditions are better for ice fishing, it can significantly up your odds for ice fishing success.

The weather question makes sense. In summer, some of the best fishing occurs on cloudy days. The cloud cover reduces light penetration, and that’s often good for fishing. Not always, but often.

In winter, snow cover and ice reduce light penetration, so the thought is, maybe the fish will bite better more often.

A couple years back, a friend called and said, “The walleye bite is on.” He had been catching them consistently in recent days.

When I arrived, so did a significant change in the weather. The air temperature had dropped and the sky was clear. My friend explained, “The bite might be off a bit,” but you can’t catch’em if you don’t drop a line through the ice, so away we went.

We drilled a couple dozen holes over a large underwater island. We fished a hole maybe five minutes, keeping a close eye on the sonar. If a fish didn’t show up, we moved. If we saw a fish on the sonar, but it didn’t eat our baits, we moved.

We moved a lot that day.

The fish were under us. We could see them on sonar. We tried smaller baits, bigger baits, different colors and different jigging actions. We tried everything we could to get bit, and every now and then a walleye ate our baits. But we saw a lot more fish on the sonar than we caught.

We tried different areas and saw fish in most. However, one area had quite a few more fish.

In early afternoon, clouds started building and the wind picked up. The weather was changing. We moved back to the area where we had seen the most fish. We wanted to be on the best spot when this weather system arrived.

Not much later, as the weather front blew in, the walleyes went on the bite. Action noticeably picked up. It was another lesson that weather does affect fish under the ice. If you like to fish through the ice, weather will change the bite—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. If you’re on the ice and notice a change in weather, keep your bait where the fish are. That’s the best way to get bit.

As in summer when the lakes are open, weather also influences a fish’s willingness to bite when the lake is iced over in the winter. If you can, plan to go fishing when the weather forecast is for favorable fishing conditions. However, even when weather conditions aren’t so favorable, it’s better to go fishing when the opportunity presents itself, regardless of weather. If we only went fishing when the weather was favorable for fishing, we wouldn’t go fishing as often we would like.

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