Q&A: TV fishing show host Jason Mitchell talks ice fishing and filming

Dec. 1—Jason Mitchell of Devils Lake is a member of the North Dakota Fishing Hall of Fame and host of

"Jason Mitchell Outdoors,"

a multi-species fishing show airing on Bally Sports North and Midwest, Midco Sports Net and on YouTube. This weekend, Mitchell, who is on the pro staff of

Clam Corp., a fishing product manufacturer

based in Rogers, Minnesota, will be at the

St. Paul Ice Fishing and Winter Sports Show,

which gets underway Friday, Dec. 1, and continues through Sunday, Dec. 3, at St. Paul RiverCentre, 175 W. Kellogg Boulevard. He

will conduct a seminar,

"Next Level Winter Walleye Tricks," at 11 a.m. Saturday.

With ice fishing about to hit full swing across the region, Mitchell talked with Herald outdoors writer Brad Dokken about ice fishing tips and trends and the challenges of filming in sometimes harsh winter weather conditions. Here is an edited transcript of that conversation.

BD: What are you hearing about ice conditions around the area?

JM: We're just starting to get out. I'm actually going to try to get out here this afternoon (Monday, Nov. 27). We had that cold snap at the end of October and then, oh my goodness, (I thought) I'll be ice fishing in October. Then it got warm afterwards, and a lot of the stuff opened back up. Now, it's froze back over again.

I've seen a few things on Facebook, where some guys are walking out on 2 or 3 inches of ice, but I like to get 3 or 4.

BD: What advice do you have for anglers venturing out on early ice?

JM: Well, obviously, you're picking small shallow lakes, and if they're protected, that's even better. Don't go by yourself, always have somebody with you, at least until you know, and then always have a spud bar to check the ice as you walk. That, I think, is probably the most important thing.

Beyond that, a float suit is a pretty good idea, or at least some type of flotation. Ice picks, ice cleats because you are walking out, and slipping and falling is probably more dangerous than falling through, in the big scheme of things. Hopefully, you do everything right where you never ever fall through — that's the whole plan — and you have the safety equipment, just in case you do.

BD: What's new out there for ice fishing this winter, whether it's tackle, gear, clothing or anything else that might have caught your eye?

JM: IceArmor (by Clam Corp.) has some new float suits that I would say are more comfortable. The float suits in the past, it was almost like this heavy foam padding built into the suit that causes the flotation, but the suits themselves were heavier and they were stiff. There's some new fabric technology that they're using now where the float suits are a lot more comfortable to use, they're a lot more flexible, feel a lot more limber. It's kind of got that soft fleece lining that's comfortable and warm.

BD: How about tackle?

JM: As far as tackle, I think on small panfish jigs, tungsten's completely taken over everything. In some places, it might be illegal for lead tackle in the future. We don't know what that's going to look like, but it seems to be trending toward that.

Tungsten is more expensive, but how many ice jigs do you go through in a day? Not that many, typically — you can get bit off by pike and stuff like that — but it's not like you're dealing with snags and things all that much. The performance of tungsten, as far as the sensitivity it gives you on your line and how it shows up on electronics, is a big advantage.

Rods keep getting better and more affordable. For many years now, you've been able to get a good rod, but the rods that you can get today for, say $40 to $60, are lights-out, in my opinion.

BD: For someone that's just thinking about getting into ice fishing, what do you have to spend these days to be pretty well set up?

JM: Well, I think if you were frugal and especially if you got a few things used and maybe used a few things that aren't the latest and the greatest ... I used to always say you could get into ice fishing and be pretty legit for $1,000. With inflation — and everything's gotten a little bit more expensive — I would say for less than $1,500, you could get really started and be pretty competent with what you have.

It's still a pretty cheap entry point compared to all the other things that are out there in the outdoors.

BD: What's the excitement level out there this year?

JM: There's a lot of buzz, I mean, just more people ice fishing all the time. Granted, the license sales across the board have dropped down a little bit after COVID, where we're getting more toward the pre-COVID levels of participation. But there's just a lot of enthusiasm. There's a lot of passion around ice angling. There's a lot of people that have seasonal jobs where they work all summer, and winter is the time they have to play, whether they work in construction or they're on road crews or they're into farming or whatever it is.

You look at all the great quality ice fishing opportunities that we have, whether you're in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, the good old days are right now. We've got some great fishing out there on the landscape right now.

BD: Plus, you've got the wheelhouses that are like luxury cabins you can pull out on the ice for days at a time.

JM: Absolutely. There's a lot more of that happening, too. And hopefully we get a winter where we don't have all the snow, where people can get out and do that a little more. The last couple of years have really been compromised.

I'd rather have safe ice in early December and driving conditions in January and February (than an early freeze-up). People can get a permanent fish house out on the lake and go back and forth to it for most of the winter. That's going to do more for the industry than an early freeze-up.

BD: What was a typical Jason Mitchell ice fishing setup when you were just starting out?

JM: Well, a typical Jason Mitchell setup was absolutely beating the hell out of a pickup. Breaking U-joints, losing money a lot of days because you're just breaking stuff all the time. And just getting stuck a lot, shoveling a lot, using tow ropes, chains and half the day you're just fighting the elements.

Whereas now, I hop in a heated cab with heated seats and heated steering wheel and I've got tracks and I just take a leisurely drive where I burn about $6 worth of fuel to drive from Woodland (Resort on Devils Lake) all the way down to Cactus Point and back (laughs). It's pretty nice.

BD: What other changes have you seen?

JM: Another thing that's different compared to, say, 30 years ago, is the number of guides and the number of accommodations that really tailor to ice fishing. That industry has long been rocking up at Lake of the Woods. They've perfected where you show up with tennis shoes and jogging pants and you hop in a Bombardier (or other tracked vehicle) and go out to a permanent house and you fish all day and holes are drilled.

There's so many more opportunities like that. You can go up to Lake Winnipeg and Devils Lake and fish with really good guides that have all the equipment where you don't really need a lot, and so that's the other thing that's changed, too.

BD: How does filming a show in the winter differ from filming in the summer?

JM: A lot more batteries (laughs). It's probably the biggest thing in the wintertime. We burn up batteries so fast on the cameras and our microphones. So we're burning through batteries a lot more. We've got to have batteries charging, we've got to have a lot more extra batteries. Condensation is an issue. Say it's 10 degrees below zero as an example, and then you go into a heated fish shelter that's, say, 50-60 degrees with a propane heater burning. Your camera's got to thaw out for half an hour to get rid of the condensation that's in the lens. And so our moves are a lot slower when it gets really cold.

And then the other thing is, I always want to show safe fish handling — especially big fish. If I'm going to keep a fish, it's no big deal, but if you catch a big lake trout, for example, and it's 5 degrees, you can't have that fish out of the water. If it's cold out, we try to always fish inside just so that we're not freezing the eyes or the fins of the fish.

BD: It's a lot different than just going out there fishing for fun, isn't it.

JM: Absolutely. I mean, you've got audio issues or if you have a lot of wind for example, you've got to figure out how you're going to get good audio. You've got to figure out the lighting (and) shadows. Sometimes, for example, you want the wind at the back of your fish house but the lighting is terrible inside the fish house and then you have to figure that out with light panels. So, you get bogged down with a lot more layers of things to think about.

If we were just out there fishing, none of that would matter.

BD: What destinations do you have on your list for this winter?

JM: I'm just going to try to be an opportunist. I'm going to try to only be up in Canada a couple of times. I'm going to try to get to Lake of the Woods this year on the Ontario side; it's kind of one thing that's on my list.

One thing I've been looking at is the St. Lawrence Seaway out in Quebec, they do some fishing — basically, it's salt water — where they're catching, like, flounder and snapper and different things in 300 feet of water. They get like 2 or 3 feet of ice out on this fjord. And it's really primitive, and most of the people speak French. I've met a couple of people that can speak English and so I'm looking at maybe doing that, exploring that out there.

I'm just kind of waiting and seeing and whatever pops up on my radar that really interests me. I'd love to go up to Tobin Lake (Saskatchewan) in the winter. I'd love to spend more time up in northern Manitoba fishing for walleyes, for example. But at the end of the day, some of that exotic, faraway stuff is fun, and it makes great episodes, but we can never go wrong just doing simple things that are really relatable like, say, crappies in Minnesota. I don't know how many crappie episodes we've done in Minnesota, but it's like we can't do enough of them.

BD: Even though you get to travel to a lot of places, there are some amazing opportunities close to home, aren't there?

JM: Some of the funnest episodes I film each year are the ones right here on Devils Lake. I drive away from some of the best fishing around, especially right now. Our perch numbers (on Devils Lake) are up, and so, Devils Lake's been a tremendous amount of fun. That's the thing — most people have something pretty cool within 50 miles of where they live if they love to fish.