Reading the Dimple in the Depression

Seems most everything these days is brazen, in-your-face, if you will. Delicacies are bygones—the world is a harsher place. There’s nothing subtle about MTV or Hummers; supersized meals or Reality shows; the trade deficit or hip-hop; Red Bull or urban sprawl.

Fortunately, fishing affords the opportunity to focus on the slightest slivers that tip the balance between success and failure. Even from the casting platform of

an extravagant bass boat, it’s the acutely chosen hue of pumpkinseed that outguns the competition, your smug brother-in-law in the back of the boat.

So it is with ice fishing, a keen attention to detail and an eye for subtlety that makes all the difference. Not always—but often—it’s finding the spot-on-the-spot where the hump breaks 10 degrees faster, or threading a single waxworm versus eye-hooking two maggots, that makes or breaks your fishing day.

Ice-fishing brass Brian “Bro” Brosdahl earned his stripes divining and unearthing such details and then communicating them to the masses. In the arena of places and spaces, Bro now brings us the dimple in the depression.

It’s largely a crappie and bluegill thing. The depression is the basin or flat or old river channel where panfish naturally congregate during winter months. Think of the depression as the community hole—that common area found on every fishable lake where permanent shacks and portables share residency and Rumplemintz. Everything’s good in Panfishville. But, as records and accounts reveal, the bite’s always a little bit better for some than for others.

Bro tends to credit the dimple. He says they’re common amongst depressions. “I’m not willing to call it luck and leave it at that,” says Bro, with the skepticism and confidence of Christopher Columbus addressing flatworlders. “There’s a reason they limit-out night after night. Many times it’s because their house is sitting a couple of feet deeper than everyone else’s.”

The Danged Depression

Bro fishes them all the time and on an array of lakes. The most common occur on natural lakes, varying in size from a couple of acres or more down to the dimensions of a car, even a feeble hybrid.

“Most are unmapped and need to be sought out with a sonar, such as a Vexilar flasher,” Bro says. And dimples are usually part of a big hole or flat, like a 30-footer that slips down to 32 or 33 feet for awhile and then comes back up. That’s a dimple in the depression.”

Bro’s best, most recent example is a spot coined Hobbes’ Hole, named by famed fish-photographer Bill Lindner while teasing my son Calvin (comic enthusiasts should make the connection). Hobbes’ Hole occurs on a large natural lake in north central Minnesota, where a 33-foot flat drops to 35 feet, creating a 100-foot by 200-foot dimple. And, as a bonus, the dimple sets up close to a 50-foot plunge.