Yellowstone

Ice fishing heats up around West Yellowstone

One couldn’t ask for a more scenic location to ice fish than Hebgen Lake, and come mid-January, ice fishermen from across the United States will swarm the small mountain town of West Yellowstone for the third annual NAIFC Ice Fishing Tournament.

Known for its healthy stock of trout and gulper fishing in the summer months, Hebgen Lake can prove to be a tricky lake to ice fish once winter rolls around.

“Hebgen can be really good, and it can be really crazy,” local ice fisherman and Kirkwood Resort and Marina manager Steve Stoddard said. “With the early ice this year, a lot of people have been out. There has been some with really good luck and some haven’t.”

As with most things, the more you ice fish on Hebgen, the easier it becomes to target fishy locations and improve one’s success rate  so much so that when the national fishing tournament rolls into town later this month, there’s a good chance a local could win top honors.
A lot of locals win a lot of tournaments because they know where to catch the fish,” Stoddard said. “There are some really good West Yellowstone fishing teams. For some, it will be the first time they’ve seen the lake.”

So far, 51 teams from 10 states have registered for the tournament. Stoddard says professional ice fishermen will be coming from as far as Minnesota and Wisconsin, with a big field of Idaho competitors as well. Ideally, Stoddard says a field of 65-80 competitors would make for an incredible weekend.

The more teams we have, the better payouts, he said. “It’s a good draw because it’s a pretty place to fish.

Stoddard and his fishing partner Scott Wetzel out of Idaho Falls, Idaho, give the local fishing tournament through exposure by competing in other tournaments throughout the country. The two recently returned from competing in the NAIFC Championship in Mille Lacs, Minn.,