Ice Fishing Slabbing

Video Transcript

"This technique is called slabbing, and it is used very specifically for smelt. You'll notice that we're going to use a very sharp knife. This is a homemade knife that's constructed out of a jigsaw blade that has been run on a grinder and is very, very sharp. It also can be used as a razor. A lot of people use razors to do this. You ideally want to take a smelt and cut a piece of it off. Today, we are going to use one of the shiners because that's what's available. We slice downward until we get under the skin and have a little bit of meat down to the backbone and then, we slice horizontally, taking off a slab. Now, here is your slab. The important thing is that it has some meat on it, and it's shiny. We, then, put that on a very small smelt hook, which is like a number eight or a number ten, a tiny, tiny hook, and hook that slab on just like that. Then, that's lowered down into a smelt hole and jigged very gently or just hung right there in front of a school of smelt."