How to fool ice-out Splake

By Gord Ellis

Splake seem torn between two instincts. In most ways, the lake trout/brook trout hybrid acts like a lake trout, staying deep during summer and seeking open-water prey like smelt and herring. On the other hand, there's just enough brook trout bouncing around in this half-breed to make it unpredictable. In spring, however, when the water's cold and food is scarce, splake get the same message from both sides of their family tree. Go shallow.

Last May, my father Gord Sr., Gene Balec, and I spent three enjoyable days targeting ice-out splake near Geraldton. We wanted to catch a trophy. The lake we chose to fish had the right ingredients to grow big splake. It had a large surface area, varied shoreline habitat, deep water, abundant forage, and received regular stockings of splake yearlings. We'd never fished it before, so our work was cut out for us.

The first afternoon, as we dragged Balec's boat to the edge of the frigid lake, Dad noticed splashing just offshore. Fish were busting at bait. Our collective blood pressure started to rise as we loaded gear and pushed off. Balec drove slowly out over the sandy beach, as I scanned the clear water below through polarizing sunglasses. On the light-coloured bottom, I could see tufts of aquatic grass. Schools of striped minnows scattered as the boat approached.

Dad clipped on a heavy spoon and tossed it out parallel to shore. A few turns of his reel was all it took before a splake decided that the green wobbling shape was tasty-looking food. A smile creased my father's face as the fish spun and bulldogged in the knee-deep water. After a couple of minutes, Balec netted a 2-pound (.9 kg) splake, firm of body and lightly mottled. Dad popped the hook out of the fish and laid it in the cooler. We'd be eating fresh splake for supper.

We continued our search and discovered the source of the splashing. A school of about 50 splake was feeding on schools of thumb-sized perch. By casting spoons we managed to pick off a couple more aggressive fish. Yet, in a matter of minutes the splake stopped biting. This was something we'd see time and time again. Splake spook much more easily than brook or lake trout, and that means they require a deliberate, quiet approach. Although the splake didn't leave the beach area, they became infected with a serious case of lockjaw. As it turned out, we found splake off just about every sandy bay we encountered that afternoon. Sometimes the fish were in schools, occasionally they were solo, but they were all shallow and initially aggressive.

An inspection of the stomach contents of these splake showed a mixture of minnows, insects, snails, and small perch. While both lake trout and brookies can eat perch, none do a better job at it than splake. They simply love 'em. Not surprisingly, we found that fire-tiger or perch-patterned spoons worked well on shallow splake.

As fun as it was to catch 2- to 3-pound (.9 to 1.36 kg) splake in knee-deep water, we wanted some hogs. We decided to fish a bit deeper on the edges of reefs and out from sandy bays.

One person trolled and ran the motor, while the other two cast towards shore. It's a trick that works well on Lake Superior for spring lakers and coaster brookies. It's the best way to quickly cover the most amount of water. The wind was blowing gently on the southwest shore so we started our troll there. I took over motor duties and clipped on a big-lipped Power Dive Minnow. The depth finder showed fish holding on a sharp dropoff that fell from 10 to 25 feet (3 to 7 m) of water, and my crankbait would be down at 13 feet (4 m) or so. Dad and Balec were bombing spoons, spinners, and sinking crankbaits to the shoreline and saw a lot of fish follow and turn away. The bigger splake were proving to be a lot tougher than the small guys.

As we trolled towards a jutting point, I could see bottom coming up on the depth finder. "There's a couple big ones," said Balec, pointing in front of the boat. "Those looked like the ones we want." The trolling pass was taking us over the inside turn of the point, and I decided to run the boat right over it. As my lure started to pound the rocky face of the reef, I felt the solid strike and the dead weight of a heavy fish. "This is a good one," I said, leaning back on my long spinning rod. "I'm not even moving this thing." The splake was incredibly strong, running deep like a lake trout, while head-shaking with the attitude of a Nipigon speck.

When the fish finally appeared beneath the boat, we all got excited. "Wow, look at that thing," stammered my father. "It's huge." The big male did look impressive, with a long, brook trout-shaped head, red fins, and deep girth. I guessed it to be about 27 inches (68 cm) long and maybe 9 pounds (4 kg). Dad was ready with the net as I started to lead the fish in, already thinking about potential hero shots, but it wasn't meant to be. With two shakes of its enormous head, the splake pulled off the treble hook and disappeared back to the depths. "Bummer," someone said. It wouldn't be the last big splake we'd lose. In fact, over three days we dropped as many fish as we landed. We learned the hard way that splake have a frustrating ability to wriggle off a hook. We even got to calling them "Teflon mouths" because of it. Sharpening hooks and changing trebles didn't help much. It was like escaping the net was some weird byproduct of the splake's hybrid vigour.

While the first big one got away, the pattern didn't, and we found larger splake cruising consistently off the edge of shallow reefs and points, usually in 12 to 15 feet (3.6 to 4.5 m) of water. We did see large splake on top of reefs, but they were spooky and tough to catch. Most of the aggressive fish hung out on the inside turns and points. The second-best spot was the tip of the point or reef close to deep water. By trolling deep- and medium-diving crankbaits along the breaks, we connected with several splake between five and seven pounds (2.27 and 3.2 kg). On the last day of the trip, stable weather blew out and sunny skies were replaced by slate-grey snow clouds and a cruel north wind. The waves also got worse, which made casting difficult and trolling a bone-jarring affair. Splake responded by coming down with a case of the pouts. It was as if the brookie blood in them had finally come out.

After several hours of washing a variety of crankbaits and spoons, Balec started digging through his overstuffed tackle box. Out of the chaos came a silver No. 3 Mepps Mino. He clipped the spinner onto a snap-swivel and slid a rubber-core sinker above it. We trolled past the tip of a rocky point and marked fish near bottom. As Balec fiddled with the zoom on his LCR, his rod whipped back and his reel started to buzz out line. The sting of the cold all but disappeared as he played in a 6-pound (2.7 kg) splake. I netted the fish and marveled at the tiny little spinner and rubber minnow that had done the trick.

Suddenly, the dozen or so real live minnows we'd brought along seemed like gold. We rigged them on spinners by replacing the trebles with long single bass hooks and threading them on. This proved even more attractive to the splake, and quickly our potential skunk day turned into a winner.

During one pass, Balec missed a strike and reeled in his spinner to check the bait. As he brought it towards the boat, a splake was swimming right behind it. If Balec dropped the spinner back, the splake followed suit. When he reeled back to the boat, the fish was right behind it. It was an aquatic version of fatal attraction. The spinner/minnow combo saved the day when conditions got tough, and we caught two limits worth of dandy splake.

Timing is important for a succesful spring splake trip. To catch the fish shallow and near shore, you need to be on a lake within a couple of weeks of ice-out. This varies widely across the province, as early as March in the south and as late as June in the north. Initially, the water might be too cold to draw large numbers of fish into the shallows, but I recommend being on the water within a week of ice-out. The larger the trout, the colder the water it will bear. As surface temperature tops 50° F (10° C), numbers of smaller splake move shallow. They usually remain relatively shallow until the water warms past 59° F (15° C).

Keep in mind that splake can range from first-generation female lake trout/ male brook trout hybrids to backcrosses with lake trout used in a failed attempt to replace lakers lost to over-netting and sea lamprey in the Great Lakes. Just by appearance alone, first-generation crosses can even fool experts. Many an angler has had their adrenaline level raised dangerously high by big splake they thought were record brookies. Splake tails can be almost square or slightly forked. The only way to be sure of whether it's a splake, a brookie, or a lake trout is to open up the fish and count the pyloric caeca, finger-like projections in the stomach cavity: brook trout numbers vary from 23 to 55; lake trout 93 to 208; splake 65 to 85.

Despite their past reputation in the Great Lakes, splake are fun to catch, grow big and more quickly than either parent, and are a first-rate table fish. They're ideal to stock for put-and-delayed-take fishing in lakes that are marginal for lakers or brookies to reproduce naturally. They also take pressure off wild trout populations by providing alternate fishing opportunities. Contact your local Ministry of Natural Resources office to find out where splake are biting in your area.