The latest reports from Lake Wilhelm told of ice fishers getting onto the ice at Access No. 1, Access No. 2 and Access No. 3, and catching fair to good numbers of big crappie and perch.

With all of the snow on the ice now, it is worth considering that getting to the hot spots at Lake Wilhelm might not require as much walking as at most area lakes.

For several years I figured Lake Wilhelm may have been the best crappie lake in Pennsylvania. It had excellent numbers and good size. Things have been much slower there for the past few years, though. Now, hopefully, it may be picking up again.

The hot area for both slab crappie and big perch is close to the dam in depths around 20 feet. The fish have been hitting best about 8 feet off bottom.

The fish can not be expected to remain at that exact depth so a portable sonar is a huge help in such deep water.

My most recent ice fishing trip to Lake Wilhelm took place in weather similar to what we have been going through this week. When Charlie Brant and I arrived at the lake at about 8:00 a.m., the temperature on my thermometer read exactly 0 degrees. About 20 inches of snow laid on the ice. A well worn path where other ice fishers had been walking and dragging sleds made walking less difficult than it would have been if we had to break fresh snow.

That trip, also, was a midwinter trip. I will make no claims that we had fast fishing all day. We most certainly did not. We ran into a couple of friends on the ice and fished as a loose group until late afternoon.

That should give you some idea about how long ago that trip happened. I was young and crazy enough to stay on the ice all day under those conditions. Did I mention wind gusted to 30 mph?

For most of the morning we managed to put some crappie, bluegill, pumpkinseed and perch on the ice, but not much more than a meal between the four of us. In fact, we were discussing which one of us should take the fish when Brant flopped a nice crappie onto the ice. Then another, and another.

He had used a spud to break open four holes that had been under an ice shelter. Litter on the ice gave him a clue that someone had good fishing there, probably the previous day.

That was not all Brant did. He is an experimenter, a searcher. If I recall correctly, we were fishing over 20 feet of water. He found the crappie at a depth of about 12 feet, here again if I recall correctly. Details are not the important lesson in this case. It was the searching that produced good results.

That is, good results for mid-winter. It would not have been a good day under late ice conditions.

Brant was using a Swedish Pimple with a glow color in the color scheme, tipped with a small shiner. I did not have the same glow colored Swedish Pimple, but I did have one with a piece of glow tape of a different color. About 18 inches above that I tied a glow-color teardrop jig directly into the line. The teardrop jig was tipped with a maggot.

I do not put dropper jigs on leaders because they are much more prone to hang up on the ice that way.

Soon Brant went searching for bigger crappie. I took his hot hole and stayed put. I was perfectly happy to take home some 9-1/2-inch crappie. He was back before long, and we shared the four holes and both caught a few more crappie.

Crappie hit both the teardrop jig tipped with maggots and the Swedish Pimple tipped with shiners.

Since late morning snow had been falling sideways. All of the ice fishers other than Brant and I fished inside shelters. Outside, we hunkered down on plastic buckets with backs to the wind, coyote ruff lined hoods cinched tight, just leaving enough open to see. We had to wear gloves. Even wearing heavy gloves, my fingers were stinging.

Since the snow started falling the sky had gotten progressively darker gray. Most, maybe all, of the ice fishers we could see left the ice at about the same time. Then began a process of helping one another by pushing vehicles that were stuck in deep snow.

I will admit that, disgusting as that adventure might seem to some people, I love that kind of thing. Enough, I think, that I will do a repeat of that trip no matter the weather very soon. It has already been discussed.

Good fishing and keep warm.