Mythbuster

[DTro]

Ok guys and gals, lets hear some ice fishing myths that you would like to see Busted or Confirmed.

My favorite one is the red line/red hook myth. So which is it the fish don't see it or they are attracted to it?

Who knows, if we get a good list going, we could forward it to the Discovery Channel

[Grant Pearson]

one myth I've heard is you never should have a bobber with a diameter larger than a nickel so the fish don't feel the resistance.

[hovermn]

Don't know how you'd ethically test it on a show like MB, but I've heard the myth that fish don't feel pain. Something about the defense system not allowing it.

[DTro]

They recently tested the "easy as shooting fish in a barrel" myth.

It was determined that you don't even have to hit the fish. The shock waves alone will kill them.

[Scott M]

Where are the fish?

Seriously, fish behavior is so poorly understood. Everybody has bad days, everybody gets skunked. It's still called fishing and not catching.

Winter fish movements change a lot. Oxygen, Temperature, Food, and cover all change in the winter. Some movements are similar to other seasons, some movements are completely different.

What are those faint marks on my flasher?

I had an interesting conversation on hydroaccoustics with Beth Holbrooke at UMN-Duluth about what an angler's flasher tells them. She uses a puck transducer the size of a manhole cover hooked up to her laptop that is worth more than some people's homes to get a read on what is going on in Lake Superior. She's a master at reading frequencies, returns, and readouts to determine what zooplankton or fish are present and where, and even sometimes, in what abundance! Long story short, to answer my question, she mentioned a lot of possibilities, mainly migrating zooplankton or other macroinvertebrates.

Still, one can never be sure without looking. I would love to have that myth busted in a variety of locations and lake types.

What is it that attracts panfish to terrestrial insect larvae

For something they have never seen before, they love it. What is in the smell or taste that they crave in those baits? Pure Fishing and Berkley research fish taste and chemical attraction and have nailed down a few things, but I'd love to hear their explanation on that one.

Why does fishing pressure affect some lakes and not others?

I can sit on Lake X amongst 20 other people and we're all pulling in bluegill. Then I travel to Lake Y and I stay away from the crowds because I know the 'gills will stay away from all those people. Pressure seems to be felt on some lakes and not others.

Why do some poor night-vision fish bite at night on some lakes and not others

I know a couple lakes where I can get a few pike after dark. Another lake puts on a phenomenal evening bluegill rush. What triggers this behavior, knowing that pike and bluegill are poor nocturnal feeders?

I will always have questions and the day I have all the answers is the day I quit fishing. As a matter of fact, I think this has happened to a few people on this site...They are at the point at which they've stopped fishing and spend their time online telling us how we are wrong and they are right

[sirsunnyslayer]

My favorite myth is when people say Northern or Walleyes lose their teeth at certain times of the year. Every time I hear that I chuckle.

[Scott M]

The fish feel pain one is a good one.

There is one camp that believes fish lack the physiological makeup to feel pain, that classify a fish's reaction to what humans might consider "painful" as a stress response. One could say that stress is a physiological response to stimuli, not pain. Pain involves nociception (pain receptors) with an association of suffering or agony. Therefore, one could say, fish lack the physiological makeup to feel pain since they work off a brainstem. it is believed that more evolved organisms feel pain (i.e. deer) since they have more advanced brain and nervous systems, but most people try to be humane to lessen suffering when killing one of these animals (think shot selection when hunting).

Another camp believes that fish feel pain due to reactions from certain studies involving injection of bee venom or vinegar into fish lips and other similar studies. Fish release a stress hormone called cortisol in these studies. Humans and other higher and more evolved animals also have stress hormones and they are associated with pain. The debate intensified over whether the presence of cortisol means pain, or if fish can understand the physiological and neural sensation of pain or suffering.

It gets pretty hairy. Just the definition of pain gets picked apart. But that's it in a nutshell. Overall, we may never be able to tell because we aren't fish and fish don't communicate pain or stress in ways we can clearly understand (although both sides of the argument will argue that statement)

[Scott M]

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My favorite myth is when people say Northern or Walleyes lose their teeth at certain times of the year. Every time I hear that I chuckle.

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Mythbusters would bust that one in a hurry, so would any angler that gets out on a regular basis during the course of a year.

[CNCMike]

The Chimney Effect: The idea that one hole will produce better than another even though they are only 2 feet apart. Sometimes it seems as though the one hole will get hammered and the other will not even when using identical bait, presentation, tackle, etc. Like the fish are stuck in a chimney created by the one hole and can not seem to escape it.

[polarsusd81]

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The Chimney Effect:

The idea that one hole will produce better than another even though they are only 2 feet apart. Sometimes it seems as though the one hole will get hammered and the other will not even when using identical bait, presentation, tackle, etc. Like the fish are stuck in a chimney created by the one hole and can not seem to escape it.

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Sounds like Upper Red to me.

[Sonicrunch]

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The Chimney Effect:

The idea that one hole will produce better than another even though they are only 2 feet apart. Sometimes it seems as though the one hole will get hammered and the other will not even when using identical bait, presentation, tackle, etc. Like the fish are stuck in a chimney created by the one hole and can not seem to escape it.

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In my experience, this has happened because one hole had a lot of weeds under it. My bait would drop into the weeds, and the fish do not see it.

A+ thread!

[CNCMike]

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Sounds like Upper Red to me.

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Upper Red about 5-6 years ago maybe. But yes, it has happened there as well.

[CNCMike]

Weeds is the case sometimes, but there have been many times where the camera shows zero difference, but fish just under the one hole.

I don't think the Mythbuster guys would do it anyway. Nothing to blow up!

[CrappieAttitude]

I would like to see underwater footage of how fish act when there is commotion on the ice. How far do they scatter when an auger is fired up and popped through the ice?

This could confirm to the people who are out there drilling at prime time how much it really affects the fish and how long it takes them to return when "all is quiet".

I know it varies with the depth of water, but It would be interesting to find out anyways.

CA

[Jimmy Jay R]

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My favorite one is the red line/red hook myth. So which is it the fish don't see it or they are attracted to it?

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I always wondered about this one.........if its true that red dissapears why do we all purchase red hooks and rapalas with red hooks and "blood" marks if the fish don't see it as Cajun line states. Who's right Cajun or Rapala? One of them has to be a Myth!

[MuskieJunkie]

My friends and I "busted a myth" a couple of years ago. Are sunfish afraid of a power auger? Belive it or not (I wouldn't have belived it) the answer is no.

Red Rock Lake, 5 FOW, strikemaster 2hp auger, drilled the first hole, dropped an Aqua Vu down, spoted a school of sunnies, kept the camera on one specific sunfish (suspended a foot or 2 off the bottom), drilled another hole right above it and the thing didnt move a muscle, I couldn't belive it.

Crappies might be different, maybe the fish's feeding mood was altered but it didn't scatter like I would have thought.

[Duffman]

I was fishing a drainage pond once right next to a major road, nothing but three inch crappies and a bunch of small bullheads. I had the camera down, and boy did the bullheads scatter when a car thumpin it's sub-woofer drove by.

[Hoffer]

I dont know for sure..but in regards to the cajun red...I thought it had something to do with the way the line absorbs the light....makes it "disappear" where as with a red hook - the light doesnt get absorbed - the red stays red...

[looneyducer]

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The Chimney Effect:

The idea that one hole will produce better than another even though they are only 2 feet apart. Sometimes it seems as though the one hole will get hammered and the other will not even when using identical bait, presentation, tackle, etc. Like the fish are stuck in a chimney created by the one hole and can not seem to escape it.

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This is a good one, but I think it might stem from the hope quotient. People catch far more fish when they think they are going to catch fish -- they fish more hopefully. The more one hole produces the more hopeful we get for that hole and, if we're fishing another hole, the more disgusted we get with our chances.

That's not to say weeds and visibility and a thousand other things don't play into it. I'm pretty sure I managed to jig my lure into a tin can on the bottom in every hole for a two day stretch last winter. Imagine the odds. I couldn't buy a fish. Of course when that cracked loose my hope quotient went through the roof and I had one of those seven-to-one days, but before then I was near ready to hang it up.

I think that, given proper time and funding, we could get to the bottom of this one. We'd all just have to spend one winter each dragging an impatient pessimist around and recording our catches. I bet the difference in numbers would be staggering.

[CNCMike]

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I think that, given proper time and funding, we could get to the bottom of this one. We'd all just have to spend one winter each dragging an impatient pessimist around and recording our catches. I bet the difference in numbers would be staggering.

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Okay, but you have to be the one who drags the Impatient Pessimist around. My sled weighs too much already!

[slipperybob]

Here's the myth!!!

Red glow lures work a lot better on URL

Green glow lures work a lot better on Green Lake in Chisago Co.

[mojocatt]

I think it is a great idea, but we have to come up with some things that would almost be considered voodoo, or something the general public would consider truth about ice fishing but is yet to be proven. Or a story you once heard that just seems too wild to be true.

I have no bright ideas right now, but I'll be sure to ponder it.

Think of it like the start of the show, "Today on Mythbusters, we test if..."

[looneyducer]

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something the general public would consider truth about ice fishing but is yet to be proven.

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You mean more sort of like we're all, every one of us, completely out of our minds, slowly freezing to death while staring at an empty hole in a desolate landscape?

I'm not so sure I want that myth busted.

[ozzie]

maybe different ways ice freezes and its stability/strength at different thicknesses.....what will hold what type of weight...........and what cause a blanket of snow will do to the strenghth!!

[gill man]

I will probably think of others, but I would like to know once and for all why ice floats.

Think about it, everything else becomes more dense when it gets cold. Water/air rises when it is warm and sinks when it gets cold, but somehow, the very coldest water, which turns into ice becomes LESS dense! Also, things tend to get smaller when they are cold (goes along with being more dense), but if anybody has ever frozen water in a bottle, you know that ice expands. I'm pretty sure this has all been explained to me before, but it sounded more like scientific mumbo jumbo put together just to make it sound like smart people had it figured out. Sounded more like a pull the wool over your eyes than anything.

If it weren't for this strange phenomenon, this forum wouldn't exist.

Ok, here's some others I thought of while typing this.

-Why do some lakes have a night bite while others don't? (different forage base maybe?)

WHY does a very slight change in the barometer turn fish on?

-Why is it that people say to fish deep late in the fall, but target the shallow flats and weeds at first ice (maybe not a myth but I have been pondering that question this year)? Do the fish actually migrate, or are there still lots of shallow fish in the fall too?

-Why do fish sometimes clobber big, bright baits one day, then spook from ANY bait, including small, natural baits, before it gets withing 6 feet of them the next day?

-Is thicker ice mainly stronger just because it is thicker and stronger, or does having a higher buoyancy cause it to deform (sag) less, and be less likely to weaken and crack?

-When you fish all different types of structures at all different depths, and do not mark ONE fish, where in the heck are they, and what are they doing??!! If anybody can bust that one, I will tape that show and make a few thousand copies of it.

I guess that's about it for now. Most of mine aren't myths as much as they are questions, but it got me thinking. Ask me after the fishing slows down this year and I'll have a LOT more.

gill man