Ice Fishing Dipping Laws

Video Transcript

Okay, so let's talk for a moment about something that is not legal here in Vermont but in many states is legal and that's called dipping. Dipping for smelt. In states somewhere out in the midwest, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, you can dip for smelt. Now I'm going to use an example of this bait fish here which is basically a fathead to show you that inside of a fishes mouth, particularly a smelt, there are small almost velcro like teeth that clamp on. They clamp on to nets and such and can actually get caught so that if you were to put a net down a hole, you would have this. You'd have a fish whose teeth were caught on the net of something as small as a pair of pantyhose. If you were to take a set of pantyhose and put weights in them or a large very fine mesh knit net and drop it down a hole, you actually have an umbrella like structure that opens up as you drop it down. The smelt will congregate around that and then you pull it up, the umbrella closes, trapping hundreds of smelt in that net. Now again, this is not legal in some eastern states, like Vermont but in other states it is possible to catch literally bucket loads of smelt by dipping.

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