Matt Johnson of Clam Outdoors breaks down the essential ice gear you’ll need as a new ice fishing angler.

Getting Geared Up for Ice Fishing: Ice Gear

Ice fishing is a great way to spend the time during the winter. It extends your fishing season, provides a new hobby, and you always have the chance to bring home some fresh fish as a meal. If you are new to the sport all the ice gear you need can be intimidating.

Clothing

The most important ice gear you can own as an angler is warm, reliable clothes. It is truly worth it to spend the money on nice base layers, a good waterproof and wind proof ice suit. Good quality gloves, hats, and nice insulated boots.

If you don’t have to proper clothing you’ll be cold and won’t be able to enjoy your time out on the ice.

Houses

Next let’s talk about ice houses. They are a variety of different ice fishing houses from big sleepers to small portable flip over house. Big ice sleepers are really nice, but those are extremely expensive and not necessarily ideal if you are just getting into the sport.

If I was going to pick one house to start out with I’d chose a mid-sized hub house. Hub houses are nice, because they don’t take up a lot of space, but you can still fit a whole family inside to fish. They set up easily and are easy to transport.

Rod, Reel, Line, Baits

Now when get down to the rods, reels, line of ice fishing the best advice I can give is try to determine what fish you’d like to target and choose your reel, reel, line according to the species.

As an example if you want to catch smaller panfish you’ll want a rod in a light or noodle power and you’ll want to pair that with a reel spooled ip with lighter line in a two to four pound test. You’ll want to purchase some small tungsten jigs and small spoons.

Now if your interesting in fishing for multi-species you should choose a rod that can do little bit of everything. A medium or medium light powered rod paired with six or eight pound test line is a good option for bass, walleye, and other mid-sized fish. 1/8-ounce or 1/4-ounce spoons tipped with a minnow head work great for all of those species.

Electronics

The last essential piece of gear you’ll want to get is some type of ice flasher. It doesn’t have to be a top of the line flasher, but you’ll want to get yourself a unit so you’ll be able to locate fish.

Hopefully these tips help you find the essential ice gear you’ll need to get into ice fishing this winter.