SCHIESS: Chasing the prized Burbot at Clark Canyon Reservoir
Published at | Updated at
The twang of the rod and the sudden ring of the bells as they were cast off the short ice fishing rod in the total darkness brought the two half asleep fishermen out of their chairs. The yellow glow stick taped to the rod was no longer bent, but almost straight with a slight pulsating movement.
“Dang, we missed it,” Lucas Ingram, my fishing partner said as he tried to set the hook. With a couple of small jigs of the rod, I saw Lucas set the rod and a “got it” as the glow stick was now almost bent in half. After a short battle the 24-inch snakelike fish slid out of the hole and tried swimming on the water covered ice.
Last Monday we decided to spend the evening of Presidents Day hitting Montana’s Clark Canyon Reservoir fishing for Burbot, commonly called ling, then driving back at midnight. Ling are midwinter spawners and come into water from 40 to 20 feet deep to feed and get ready to spawn.
“My favorite area to fish for them is along the island in about 20 feet of water where the rock boulders are about the size of bowling balls,” Ingram said as we walked across the 24 inch ice looking for a sheltered suitable area to hide from the wind. We settled into a small cove on the southeast side just 200 yards from where Lucas and his son, Ace, had caught seven just a week before.
Catching ling consistently takes a specialized technique with some specialized equipment as they do not readily hit during the middle of the day. The best time to fish for them is from five in the evening until midnight when they are most active. In Montana you can only ice fish with two rods instead of five like you can in Idaho and since we were fishing at night, we taped glow sticks on the rods so we could see them.
For bait we were using sucker meat sprayed with crayfish scent on a glow-in-the-dark three inch jig. Each of us would jig one of the setups while the other would be set in a JawJacker which will set the hook when a fish starts mouthing the bait.
“When I find water about 20 feet deep I like to drill a lot of holes around there so I can try to find a “highway” where the fish move through consistently,” said Ingram as we set up the ice tent after we had found a 20 foot channel. “When I find one of those “highways” I can catch up to 20 fish before they quit biting.”
Fishing was rather slow as we would ice only six ling and a brown trout, but missed over 20 bites with the set rods and were only able to entice two of them to retake the bait. We were able to land two before dark with Lucas taking one just over 28 inches and I took a 24 incher.
Ling used to be a “trash” fish in Montana but is now a prized fish with hundreds of fishermen targeting them every winter weekend. Permanent ice shanties are put on Clark Canyon Reservoir each December and usually removed in late February or early March when the ice begins to deteriorate.
“Not many people out on this Monday night,” said Ingram as we walked off the ice. “Last weekend when we left at midnight the island looked like a decorated Christmas tree with all the lights surrounding it.”
It was a great trip except for the closed interstate that forced us to sleep in the truck for a couple hours in Lima, Montana and then a drive through a blizzard after the road opened. Hopefully the ice will remain good enough for another trip after the Burbot.
