As a fly fisherman, I usually decide where to fish based on one simple question: Where is the fish’s food?
In a pond, I rarely cast aimlessly. I look for weeds where insects live and baitfish hide. I look for structure — rock piles under the surface, downed trees and points that taper into deeper water. I pay attention to incoming brooks and streams because current dislodges food and washes it into the pond. To me, fishing has always been about understanding the ecosystem and then placing the fly where life is happening.
It feels intentional, calculated and logical.
So when I go ice fishing, it almost feels like all that logic disappears. From what I’ve seen, most people drill holes starting shallow and work their way deeper, just covering water. Set traps in a line, drop shiners down and wait. Maybe move one if nothing happens. It doesn’t feel like reading water or matching hatches. It feels more like spreading out and hoping.
Which is why I decided to try something different: bring a fly rod onto the ice.
This past weekend, Stac and I were invited to ice fish with our friend Zach and a group of his college buddies and their wives. They make it a point to get together every year for this trip. Even though I don’t ice fish much anymore, they invited us to join them.
The day before, I started thinking about how to make the trip enjoyable for me. Jigging seemed more appealing than just sitting around waiting for a flag. Don’t get me wrong — when a flag pops up and everyone takes off running, it’s exciting. But in my limited experience, there’s usually more sitting and waiting than running and catching.
So I decided to bring my 2-weight from Scott Fly Rods and treat the whole thing like fly fishing, just vertically instead of horizontally.
My original thought was crappie, so I grabbed a few small flies and figured I’d experiment. But Friday night Zach called and threw a wrench into my plan. The Airbnb was on Long Pond in Bucksport and, according to the Maine IF&W website, the pond held yellow perch, white perch and bass.
I swapped in small Clousers, leech patterns and a few baitfish imitations. I didn’t really know what I’d need, but uncertainty is part of fly fishing.
Stac and I also had to grab our fishing licenses since it was our first time fishing in Maine this year. There’s something about buying that first license of the year. It means the season has officially started — even if it’s through the ice.
When we arrived Saturday morning, Drew and his wife were already outside setting traps. They had them spaced from shore out to about 25 feet of water, covering the depth range. Using shiners, they had already caught a yellow perch and a white perch before they were even done setting up.
Inside the house, Zach was making breakfast and fly fishing shows were playing on the TV, which made me laugh. Here we were on an ice fishing trip watching trout eat dry flies somewhere warm.
We all sat around talking for a while, but I kept glancing out the window at the ice. Eventually I bundled up and headed outside to see if this fly rod idea would actually work.
Drew pointed me to two open holes. He had just lost a big fish on one trap nearby and the other hole had already produced perch earlier that morning.
The day was surprisingly warm, in the 40s, though the wind gusted to nearly 30 mph. Still, it was bluebird skies and one of those days that reminds you winter won’t last forever.
I dropped my fly down the hole and started jigging with short lifts and slow drops.
Most of the group stayed inside watching the traps from the warmth of the house. Eventually Stac came out and sat with me. We talked, watched the other traps and I kept working the fly up and down the water column.
Then she yelled, “Flag!” We both started running.
That sudden burst of adrenaline is the part of ice fishing I understand. When I got there, line was steadily peeling off the spool — always a good sign.
I pulled the trap, grabbed the line and set the hook by hand. There was weight. A solid tug.
My first fish of the year. And maybe my first fish through the ice in over a decade.
It turned out to be a largemouth, around 12 inches. Not huge, but it didn’t matter. It was alive, it pulled and it counted.
Suddenly everyone came pouring out of the house. That’s when I realized something.
The fish was part of it, but the reaction — the shared excitement — was bigger.
After that, Zach dropped a sonar transducer into my hole so I could watch my fly descend and see marks appear beneath it. Now I could see fish rise and approach the fly. At one point, a fish came up slowly, inspected it and hovered just inches away.
It never ate, but watching that interaction in real time felt almost like sight fishing, just on a screen.
We spent the next few hours outside talking, laughing and checking traps. No one seemed overly concerned with numbers.
That’s when it hit me: fishing is often just an excuse.
An excuse to gather, to disconnect from phones and to sit next to each other talking about life.
These were college friends in their 20s traveling from Massachusetts, New York, Down East Maine and locally to keep this annual trip alive. Life gets busy. Careers start, families grow and people move away. But they still make the effort to get together.
I don’t think they measured the weekend by how many fish they caught. They measured it by being together.
That shifted ice fishing for me. I gave the fly rod three solid hours and I’d absolutely try it again. Maybe next time I’ll target crappie or refine the fly selection and cadence, treating it more like vertical fly fishing instead of comparing it to what it isn’t.
Am I buying an auger, sonar, snowmobile and ice shack? Probably not.
But I might need a few more friends who ice fish so I can tag along once or twice each winter. Because ice fishing might not be about logic or matching the hatch.
Sometimes it’s just about running to flags together — and realizing the real catch isn’t the fish at all.
