Nighttime eelpout frenzy saves slow day of fishing

The fishing, to be blunt, hadn't been very good when Peter Howard and I decided to shift gears and try something different that gray afternoon during a recent ice fishing and snowmobiling excursion to the Northwest Angle on Lake of the Woods.

It was Feb. 29, and we had spent most of the afternoon fishing "the mud" in 27 feet of water off the base of a rock reef south of Oak Island. We'd marked plenty of fish, but they weren't much interested in biting, and we had only a 15-inch walleye, a small sauger and a couple of missed opportunities to show for our efforts.

Without getting too specific, I'd learned of a spot several years ago where eelpout stage to spawn. These freshwater cod, widely known as the "ish of fish," spawn from late January to mid-March depending on the body of water and are the only species in Minnesota to spawn under the ice.

Spawning eelpout also go on a feeding rampage at dark, and so our timing was perfect.

The "pout hole," as we dubbed the spot, is located in a current area between two islands, and the ice conditions were treacherous. Where the rest of the lake had 3 feet of ice, the pout hole had 18 inches, and there was open water less than 40 yards from where we set up the portable shelter.

This was my first trip to the pout hole, so I didn't know what to expect. It also was a first for Howard, who was making his inaugural ice fishing trip to the Northwest Angle.

He'd never caught an eelpout, but that soon would change.

Daylight was fading when we dropped heavy jigging spoons tipped with minnow heads into 14 feet of water and began pounding the bottom.

We hadn't been fishing more than a few minutes when something glommed on to the end of my line. It felt like a snag, but I knew it wasn't, so I set the hook.

Several years ago, I did a story on two fishermen from the Bemidji area who targeted eelpout during the late-winter spawning frenzy. They had a tradition where every time they hooked into an eelpout, they had to holler "Pout!"

We might have struggled to catch walleyes and saugers by day, but the eelpout were in a fighting mood by night. If anyone had been there to listen, they would have heard the cries of "Pout!" resonating through the darkness.

Doubles and laughs were common as the hefty fish peeled line off our reels.

The frenzy was in full swing when I discovered the LED lights I'd installed in my portable before the trip didn't work, even though they'd worked fine when I tested them the previous day. Trying to land and unhook slimy, writhing eelpout in pitch darkness eventually became too much, so I made a quick trip back to the cabin to round up some light.

I also wanted to see what was causing large bubbles to float to the top of the holes every few seconds, producing loud "blooping" sounds. We had plenty of ice below us, but I still found the bubbles unsettling.