[music playing] hi, i'm matt evenson. i'm a research biologist withthe alaska department of fish and game division of sport fish. today, i'm going to showyou how to catch burbot
Alaska Dept Of Fish And Game, through the ice using set lines. we're out here on thetanana river near fairbanks, and it's mid december. it's a perfect time to catchburbot, so let's get started.
i'll show you how this works. first, let's take a quicklook at the regulations for burbot set lines. each set must be labeledwith your name and address, and you have to check eachset at least once a day. you have to use single hookswith a gap between the point and shank that's largerthan 3/4 of an inch. and your hooks mustbe set so that they rest on the bottomof the lake or river.
now you're allowed to have asmany hooks out as the daily bag limit for burbot. so for example, if thedaily bag limit is five, then you're allow to useup to five hooks per day. you can attache more than onehook to a set line if you want, but i wouldn't recommendusing more than two per line. and we'll talk a littlebit more about that later. of course you want to besure to check the regulations before you go out to findout what the daily bag
limit for burbot is and tomake sure that set lines are legal where you're fishing. let's talk about a few thingsyou'll need to bring with you. you'll need a snow shovel, anice ladle, an ice spud or ice chipper, and a sign ortag to label your set. it's also handy bringalong a rag and an expert gloves in case yourhands get wet or slimy. in addition to the materialsyou'll need for your set lines, you'll need a means to cuta hole through the ice.
i prefer using a gas-poweredpowered ice auger, but a handheld auger or anice spud can be used as well. if using an iceauger, i recommend using an auger bit that's 8inches in diameter or larger. so let's grab the shovel,clear off a couple of spots, and drill some holes. ok, so the first methodi'm going to show you is what i call the"strong line method." and to do this, all you needto do is cut a support stick.
now this one i'm showingyou is a dimensional 2 by 2, and it's about 18or 20 inches long. but you can use anykind of material one by-- here's an old beaver stickthat would work just fine. here's a wooden dowel. you can see they're allabout the same length-- anything that's goingto span across the hole that we just drilledand support the line. now for the rope,there's a variety
of things you can use as well. i like to use one eighthinch braided nylon rope, but parachute cord or akind of heavy duty string that you might have will work. it's really hard to gettoo big with this stuff. what you want tosomething that's going to be durableand not break on the edge of theice and something that you can useover and over again.
so after i drill the hole, irun my line through the center and i knot it off. and then i can wrap the linearound the support stick to transport it. now depending on thewater your fishing, you might need anywherefrom 10 to 25 feet of line. for these river applicationswhere we're at today, i never need any morethan 20 feet of is plenty. so at the far end of theline, i tie on a lead sinker.
i like to use a pretty heavysinker somewhere around 8 ounces or so works really well. if you get too lighta sinker, what happens is the current for the riverwill wash the line downstream, and the line can freeze upagainst the side of the hole and cause problems. so a nice heavy sinker is key. so i tie it on the line about12 to 14 inches from the end. then i tie two loops into theline, and from these loops
i'm going to attachmy leader lines that have the hook and the bait. so the set up looks like that. so the leader lines can beproblematic if your fishing a lot of holes. they're hard tokeep from tangling. so what i like to do is stringthem together and wrap them around a stick like this. that just keeps them organized,keeps them easy to access
and prevents them from tangling. so there's a varietyof things you can do to build theseleader lines too. what i like to do is get twostainless steel snap clips and attach them toabout a 12 or 14 inch section of braidednylon trolling line. this trolling line's120-pound test. you want something fairly stout. again, durability is thekey, and finesse isn't really
an issue with burbot fishing. so we'll go ahead and attachthese to the drop line now. first, we'll put one on theloop up near the sinker, and then we'll attachthe second one like that. so now i just needto snap on my bait. so i like to pre-baitmy hooks back at home. i chop up the baitinto chunks, and then i throw them on the hook there. and then i put themin a small cooler
to transport to the river. so that prevents me get myhands all slimy and messy when i'm out here. you can see i have apre-baited hook ready to go, and then i just snap itright onto my leader line. i prefer usingwhite fisher bait, and that's whatwe're using today. but you can also useherring, or squid, or any kind of commerciallyavailable fresh fish
you might be able to find. you can also use the heads, andtails, and viscera of any sport caught fish. it's just illegalto use the flesh. like that, now we'reready to drop the set down through the ice. so when i drop the set throughthe whole, what i like to do is start with the baitfirst, let that fall down through the hole and thenfollow it the weight.
and then i unrollthe line until i feel the sinker hitthe bottom, and then i wind up the slack until thesinker's just on the bottom and the line isstraight up and down. and then i set the supportstick on the upstream side of the whole so thatas the current washes the line down alittle bit, it doesn't wash it all the way the farside of the hole and freeze on the side.
so now we're ready tocover the setup with snow to insulate it to keep itfrom freezing overnight. now i like to just coverthe hole directly with snow. some people like tocover up the whole first with a piece ofcardboard or foam. but my experiencewith that has been it just creates a big messovernight, and a lot of times there's a lot of waterleft over on the snow. and the cardboard or the foamwill just freeze to that,
and you end up peeling it offand breaking it and leaving debris all over the ice. and also i think that thedirect snow to water interface creates a betterinsulation, so i prefer to just cover thehole entirely with snow with no cardboard or foam. so i like to make a pretty goodsized mound about 2 feet high and about 2 to 3 feet indiameter around the whole-- the more the better.
all it can do is providemore installation. i also like to use drysnow away from the hole. there's a lot of water thatcomes up off of the auger right near thehole, and i prefer to cover the hole with nicedry snow so it doesn't freeze. and it's easier toclear off next day. ok, so there we have our holecovered with a good mound of fresh dry snow. the last thing we haveto do is label our set,
so what i like todo is break off a willow stick fromnearby bank and stick it right in the mound of snow. and then i've made up somepre-labeled laminated name tags that i'm going totie to the stick. now you can writeyour name and address on a piece of flagging tape,or a small piece of wood, or a piece of cardboard,or whatever you've got. so now we're ready tolet it set overnight,
and we'll come back and seewhat we've got tomorrow. ok now i'm going to showyou how to set a pole set-- strong pole set we call this. what i've got is this 6 to 8foot section of spruce pole. if your fishing indeeper water, you might need a littlelonger pole than this. but for this application,we're not in very deep water, and ice isn't very thick. so 6 or 8 feet works just fine.
so at the bottomend of the pole, i've tied on about a 14 to 16inch piece of parachute cord, and i've tried two loops in it. now you could use this thebraided nylon rope here too. it doesn't matter. the idea is that it'sfairly stout line here. put the point leader onthe loop nearest the pole and one leader on theloop at the end like that. now i can just takethe bait and the book
clip it right on the othersnaps along my leader. so it looks likethat, and again, i don't like to use any more thantwo pieces of bait per set. if you get muchmore than that on, you have problems with tangling,and the lines breaking off, and things like that. so i would stick to one ortwo leader lines per set. now i put the bait into thehole first, let it sink down. then i'll followit with the pole
until the pole hits thebottom and lean it up against the side like that. so now we just have tocover the whole snow and put our label onagain like we did before. i see it's startingto get dark out. so maybe we ought to pack ourthings up and head for home. and we'll come back tomorrowand see what we've got. ok so we're back the next day. we're going to checkour pole set now.
when i check my sets i like tobring a forked stick with me about 3 or 4 feet long. and what i do itthis is oftentimes when you bring up a linethat doesn't have fish on it, the current willswing the line down. and the hook will get caughton the underside of the ice, and it's hard to get out withoutsticking your arm down there, which you don't want to do. so i take this stick andi slide it down the line
until i get to the hook. and i can push offthe bottom of the ice, move it over, and then pullit up through the hole. so this is a real handy item. i suggest bringing one with you. ok so first i'll shovel the snowoff that's covering the hole. and we'll take ourice chipper and we'll clean off a littlebit of the ice that's formed around the edgeof the top of the hole.
this is one advantageof using the strong pole set is that i don't haveto worry about chipping in the line with my spud. i can get pretty aggressivewith chipping ice out and not worry aboutbreaking the line. and now i'm ready to pull upthe poll and see we've got. you want to pullit up real gently in case there's a fish on. i don't want to get himcaught on the bottom side.
and this time we came up empty. so if we want to reset thisset, we can unclip the baits and grab a new one from ourbait cooler and clip it on. after the bait's beenin the water overnight, it's effectiveness decreasespretty dramatically. it's always better change yourbaits every day if you can. ok well, let's checkanother one to see if we have any luck here. here's our name tagand marker branch.
here's our set stick. you can see thishas stayed insulated pretty well all night. there's not much ice. and i just take my spud and icarefully chip around the edge. i want to make sure i don'tnick my drop line and cut it. ok so we want to try topull this up as straight and slowly as we can, and i feelthat there's a fish on there. so what i want to do is coax himup into the column of the whole
so that the other hook, if itdoesn't have anything on it, doesn't get snagged onthe bottom side the ice. so once i see thathe's in the hole, i just want to pullhim straight up. look at that. there's a very nicetanana river burbot. he's probably aboutseven pounds or so. ok, so we're goingto take him off. we're going to take himoff of the drop line.
so this is where the snapclips come in real handy. we can just unhook theleader from the drop line. we don't have to worryabout digging the hook out of the fish's mouth. we can do that at home. and then if i wantto reset this, i can simply snap on anotherleader with a new baited hook and put it down the hole. so we want a dispatch our fish.
and put him in a plastic bag ora cooler to transport him home. there we go, success today. ok, so we had a prettygood haul of burbot today. we're going to take thesehome now, and clean them up, and cook them. and maybe we'll see you outon the ice here some time this winter. i hope you an getout and enjoy it. it's a real funwinter activity to do.
it's a good way to get outand enjoy the great outdoors. good fishing.
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