Ice fishing keeps charter business afloat in winter

Most of the Port Washington charter fleet is packed up for the winter, but a couple of charter businesses are getting ready for the ice fishing season starting this week.

Ninja Charters owner Luke Chatfield said he plans to put out permanent ice fishing shelters he shares with Nolan’s Top Gun Charters on Green Bay next week while also surveying ice conditions on harbors and rivers along the Lake Michigan coast for brown trout and steelhead fishing.

“That’s one thing we specialize in,” he said. “There are only four or five guides that offer brown trout and steelhead fishing through the ice.”

Chatfield said he runs the charters at the Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha harbors as well as the mouth of the major rivers. Due to the hot water discharge from the Port Washington power plant, the harbor usually doesn’t freeze enough for ice fishing.

“It needs really, really negative temperatures to freeze,” he said.

A cold snap last year meant Chatfield got out on the Port harbor for a couple of days. He said he was probably the first person to ice fish the harbor in a decade.

Chatfield said he’s offered coastal ice fishing for the last five years and normally runs two to four trips a week. It’s something that appeals to his most die-hard customers as the ice isn’t as stable as on the bay and the fishing is more sporadic.

“It’s not something where people are catching 20 fish a day,” he said. “You have a certain clientele. It’s a trophy thing for sure. That’s why there aren’t many guides.

“It’s really cool that you can catch these fish on the ice.”

Chatfield starts preparing early in the season by using his speedboat’s sensors in the harbors and rivers to see where steelheads are going into the rivers and brown trout are coming out.

Later, he spends two days equipped with ice picks and a float suit checking for weak points in the ice and making mental notes where bridges will be needed and what docks will be safe to climb from.

The day of, Chatfield ensures there are safe walking areas and watches the ice near the rocks and docks, which melts first.

“It’s spending the time to know where you can’t go,” he said. “You have a lot of stuff fighting you on harbor ice.”

Chatfield has one full-time employee, Andrew Schaffer, and one part-timer who have been helping him prepare for the coastal ice fishing season that is just now starting.

Schaffer mainly runs the Green Bay ice fishing trips and Chatfield helps on the weekend when they often have more than 40 people at their 10 permanent and six temporary shacks they share with Nolan’s.

Next week, Chatfield plans to start clearing ice roads four or five miles out on Green Bay and setting up the permanent shacks.

“A lot of people think ice freezes flat, but when the waves are crashing on top then you have ice heaves,” he said. Those, along with heaves from pressure cracks, need to be flattened with plows.

They haven’t been able to do much ice fishing on the bay for the last couple years due to warm temperatures, which meant they couldn’t put out the permanent shelters and instead were forced to stick to the inner bays in the temporary shacks, he said.

Chatfield said this season is shaping up, however.

“It is looking really good,” he said. “We have a few 3-degree, 6-degree days in the forecast, which we need to lock Green Bay.”

A good bay freeze happens when ice forms in the south from the city and north from the islands, specifically Chamber’s Island, and then meets in the middle, Chatfield said. If it isn’t “locked in” to the islands, it can split off into the lake.

“If you have 40 people out there, that’s a lot of lives to think about,” he said.

Ice fishing is never completely safe and guides require lots of experience, Chatfield said.

“It’s a big body of water to not know what you’re doing,” he said.

Ice fishing trips on the bay are more affordable at $150 a person compared to the $600 to $700 cost of a summer charter, Chatfield said.

“There’s not much in today’s world you can do for 150 bucks,” he said. “Some some buddies get together and say, ‘What should we do?  Go to the bar and blow a 100 bucks? No, let’s go ice fishing.’

“You’re fishing in 80 to 100 feet of water. There’s not many places in the world you can do that.”

Chatfield said the unpredictability of winter weather makes ice fishing trips an unreliable income for charters.

“It’s so weather dependent,” he said. “If the weather doesn’t cooperate, well, you don’t have a job for three months.

“A lot of people say, ‘Screw it, I will get a part-time job.’”

Chatfield said there are only about 10 charter captains in Port Washington for whom fishing is a full-time business. Most take the winter off, although one goes to Florida for charter fishing.

“If you do enough over the summer, you can do enough business to last you the year, especially if you’re retired,” he said. “I am young enough to not want to sit around during the winter.”

Chatfield said he eventually wants to expand to two boats. He said he makes the most money during the summer season that runs from the last week of May to the first of September. He runs an average of 175 summer charters a year compared to about 35 coastal winter charters.

His business is all about building relationships with customers, Chatfield said. Ninja gets only about 10 to 15 new customers a year.

His customers come from across the country, he said. One client flies in from Colorado to fish a couple times in the summer and a couple times in the winter.

On Green Bay, there is only Ninja, Nolan’s and a couple of larger ice fishing companies, Chatfield said.

“It’s all one big community,” he said. “We are competitors, but at the end of the day it’s about safety, as much as you can get on the ice.”

Between summer charters seven days a week and a steady winter schedule, the job entails long hours, Chatfield said.

When he goes to Sturgeon Bay for a charter, he has to leave around 3:30 a.m. to get back around 10 p.m., Chatfield said.

“But, it’s fun and rewarding when you get a dad and a son that can catch 10 whitefish in one trip. Or, when you have a guy that never had done the brown trout thing before,” he said.