This weekend marked another weekend of learning and enjoying time outside. We made a last-minute decision to go fishing outside of town. Making a decision on where to fish is always a difficult decision. Choosing a destination within a three-hour drive of Quesnel, British Columbia is not easy because there are many productive lakes that I want to fish. We settled on booking a hotel room in the city of One Hundred Mile House and chose where we wanted to fish for the weekend on our morning drive to the area.
Our day started as early as possible. We woke up, ate breakfast and packed the truck for a quick one night away fishing trip. Excitement was setting in as we packed our headlights, ice fishing tent light and UV light for a night of burbot fishing. We packed healthy snacks (and one bag of candy), lunches and dinner for the trip. Our breakfast was planned as a complimentary breakfast that the hotel provided.
On our drive from Quesnel to One Hundred Mile House, we talked about our angle of attack for the day. While we wanted to get fishing first thing in the morning and fish the first lake we came to in the area, we decided on a safer approach to our fishing trip. We discussed pre-scouting the lake and the area we were going to fish in in the evening. The weather this year has been unseasonably warm, and my fear was not knowing if the ice was safe that we were going to fish on in the evening and into the dark of the night.
When we arrived at the lake, we were hoping to fish for lake trout and kokanee for a couple of hours before checking in to our hotel room. We unloaded all our gear into our two ice fishing sleds, a Pelican sled and a Jet Sled by Eagle Claw. Our first portion of the morning involved checking ice thickness. The lake had recently frozen over and the concern for uneven ice was real. Using our StrikeMaster 40v electric Ice Auger, we drilled many test holes. We measured each hole and found ice thickness ranging from four and a half inches to six inches, with five inches seeming to be the average.
Once our ice fishing tent was set up, we started warming up our lunch over our Big Buddy Heater. As a cautionary measure, I set the tin foil back farther than normal on my cooking rack that I attach to the top of the heater. The concern with cooking (warming up) food over a buddy heater is oils and grease from the food dripping on the heating element. I also had an incident where the tin foil was redirected too much and melted half the plastic handle of the heater.
We tried targeting lake trout over eighty feet of water close to a drop off into one hundred feet of water. While a couple fish came in to inspect our jigs, they were not interested enough to bite. Some fish even followed our jigs up but could not be enticed to bite.
After our stomachs were full and our Garmin Striker 4 screen showing no fish below us, we decided to pack up and head to our hotel to check in. Our plan was to have a nap before our evening fish. We wanted to check in, sleep and then return to the lake before the sun went down. Unfortunately, the excitement of another night of burbot fishing had us preparing for our adventure in our room and tossing and turning trying to get a nap in. Waking up and getting out of a comfortable hotel bed proved difficult, but we managed to quickly vacate the room once we were up and out of bed.
Our plan to arrive at the lake before the sun went down went as smoothly as it could have for being awake most of the morning. Unfortunately, there were people already set up in the area we wanted to go, so we had to settle on plan B. With our limited knowledge of burbot fishing, I decided to set up close to our desired fishing location. I chose a depth of fifty feet with a gradual slope into eighty feet on a ledge over one hundred feet. My thoughts on this location were that the burbot would be slowly moving up from the depths and into the shallows. I was hoping to intercept them as they moved into the shallows to feed.
As the sun set, we enjoyed watching the sunset’s gift of colors in the sky and welcomed the night sky as the temperature started to drop. After we finished setting up our tent, we looked around and saw stars starting to appear all around us. We turned on our Big Buddy Heater right away to take the chill out of the air and put smokies and hot dogs on the grill to warm up for dinner. Then, we put up our night lights in the tent. Our first night light is a pull-down light that attaches and hangs from the center top hub. Our second night light, the one we love and use the most, was then blown up and hung. I bought this 1,000 lumen collapsable night light on amazon a few years back and love it.
We spent three and a half hours after the sun went down watching the screen on our fish finder for any sign of fish activity. Only two fish appeared, checked out our Big Nasty Tackle trout and pout spoon and then leave. We tried using our UV flashlight to get our jigs as bright as they would glow. We also tipped our hooks with raw shrimp to help attract and entice a bite. Nothing.
While our plans were to stay on the ice as late as we could, our lack of sleep started catching up to us and we found it hard to concentrate on a blank, uneventful screen. Eventually, we saw a few more fish come in to check us out, but that was it. I tried bouncing bottom in different patterns, speeds and intensities. I tried bouncing bottom and letting my jig sit just inches, and sometimes feet off the bottom. While nothing worked, we were still happy to be outside. As we started fading, we developed a game plan for packing up and leaving. The outside temperature had fallen quickly and now we were up against time and how long it would take us to pack up our gear.
I always like to organize and pack up all my small items before anything else gets packed up. Then, I turn off my heater which gives it time to cool off before putting it away. Next, we pack everything outside and place items in our ice sleds in the order they went in. By this time, the heater normally cools down enough, and we can pack it up. Lastly, we strategically break down our ice tent. Each hub gets pushed in, then the top gets pushed down. The ice anchors are then removed when the risk of wind has subsided. If the wind is a concern, I like to step on the skirting and face the tent in a direction where the wind helps hold it down and not try to blow it away. I have seen a few tents tumble down a lake and my method has worked so far to prevent this from happening.
The worst part of night fishing is leaving. I always leave wondering if the fishing will be picking up after I leave and if my decision to leave was the right one. Thankfully, as long as I do not have friends left on the ice, I will never know how the fishing could have been. This leaves my imagination open for my next adventure and I start dreaming about my next trip before I even get to my truck.
Walking off the ice in the dark is always a fun experience. There is always an experience to be had. Sometimes, the wind is blowing, and it blows the snow around. I have found this to be the most disorientating because trails can get covered and it is easy to get turned around in the dark. The experience we had on this trip was one of my favorites that I have not had often. We left the lake under clear skies, with our headlights on. The snow was glistening, and the stars were sparkling. Our headlights lit the way as our breath filled the cold winter night. Even though we caught no fish on this day, it was a day and night I will not forget anytime soon. We were able to relax, hang out with good company and experience mother nature the way she intended it to be.
While I did not get any video footage this trip, partially due to my GoPro battery getting stuck in my camera and due to the lack of fish caught, here’s a couple videos from my YouTube channel, Fougere Family Adventures, fishing on Horse Lake in British Columbia, Canda. Please subscribe to my channel for more videos coming soon.