Photo by Rod Cochran.

After last year's balmy weather kept anglers on shore for most of the winter, fishermen across New York have their fingers crossed that this season will provide enough safe ice.

Climate changes seem to be shortening the ice-fishing season, or at least there's been a trend in that direction, according to Albert Daher, who has nearly 50 years of experience on Oneida Lake.

"Ice-fishing's been spotty for the last five years, and we certainly haven't been seeing the ice we had 10 or 15 years ago," he claims. "In the mid-70s, anglers were putting extensions on their augers to punch through three feet of ice."

For most of us, that may be too much of a good thing. But Empire State winter anglers plan on setting up for a spectacular variety of ice-fishing opportunities unmatched anywhere else in the country.

Recent regulations controlling the use of minnows, aimed at stemming the spread of VHS -- a virus deadly to fish, but harmless to humans -- have been widely disseminated and accepted by fishermen, according to Daher, proprietor of Mickey's Bait and Tackle in North Syracuse.

"Emerald shiners, also called buckeye minnows, along with golden shiners and other species are inspected for the disease before they reach retail bait shops," he explained.

"Customers buying minnows receive live-minnow purchase receipts‚ which are valid for seven days and must be carried while fishing and transporting the minnows."

Despite a seemingly unlimited number of ice-fishing locations in New York, here is a sampling of 10 top hotspots to get you started this winter:

LAKE CHAMPLAIN
Often called the sixth Great Lake, Champlain is popular with ice-fishermen because it contains both coldwater and warmwater species. Most anglers target walleyes, smelts, perch, pike, landlocked salmon and lake trout, they also take rainbow and brown trout, pickerel, muskellunge, crappies and other panfish.

Although smelts occur in many lakes in New York, Champlain is the only location attracting sizable numbers of fishermen who wait, usually in the comfort of shanties, for the nearly imperceptible twitch that indicates a hit from what most people might call bait fish. But smelts travel in large schools, there is no daily limit on Champlain and deep-fried smelts are a midwinter treat!

Lake trout and the other salmonids frequently lurk under the schools of smelts and other baitfish, while walleyes and perch are usually associated with the lake's hard bottom humps and shoals. The shallow bays and weedlines near shore produce pike, pickerel and panfish.