We usually get first ice by the last week of November around Thanksgiving time, and as late as Christmas like last year. I love hard water. As the
ice fishing season progresses, the panfish taste sweeter and sweeter. They go from their summer diet of bugs and worms to a winter diet of
copepods and diatomes. Microscopic and barely visible to the eye. Eating smaller on the food chain in the winter months makes them taste
sweeter.
Jigs
Don't forget a good lake map book
Do I need this many rods when I'm usually just
fishing with one. Nope, but it sure looks like I
know what I'm doing.
Mean Green
Home made spring bobbers from .010 guitar strings.
Small Snyder jig. Spikes and Mousies are caddis larva
that I buy 1000 of each at the beginning of the season.
Vexilar FL 8
Perch are my favorite year round, but especially ice fishing
16" Crappie
Secret sauce for crappie. Anise oil.
I normally chase bluegills or perch in the winter as I
like them better than crappies. However this Anise oil
will easily quadruple catches for crappie if that is
ones target.
It is sold at grocery stores and used for flavoring in making rock candy.
Just a small dab on the hook or jig, and then fish with the normal
minnows or grubs. A little goes a long way. Anise oil is the main
ingredient in commercially made crappie baits.
I have used Mora hand augers for years and a spud before that.
Sharp spuds are always good for first ice. If you can punch a hole with
one poke, back away in the direction you came from. I bought an ION
36 v auger a couple years ago which is supposed to go through 1000' of
ice on one charge.
When I was using the Mora hand auger, trying to drill
50 to 75 different holes some days to find them, my arms would hurt the
following day. The ION 36v auger makes sore arms a thing of the past.
Notice the small cardboard box wrapped in a grocery bag on the back side of the
Vexilar FL 8 flasher in the above pic. One of the top flaps is tucked into
the back of the flasher box where the 12v battery keeps it pinned there.
Once I've found a general area where I'm catching them and have a few
holes drilled in the area I can hole hop catching one or two from one hole and
then go to the next closest hole.
Hole hopping increases my catches of bluegill and will invariable result in
finding some holes that produce better than others. When I catch a couple at one
hole, I can throw them in the grocery bag lined box and then move to the next
closest hole. Lather, rinse, repeat and every so often, deposit them back at where my
bucket or portable shanty I drag out is at.
And never venture out onto the ice without a pair of these in your coat pocket.
These ice picks could be the difference between life and death if one falls through.
They can be used to help pulls ones self out of the freezing water.
Better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not have them.
I made the ones on the left years ago from the broken handle of a post hole
digger and some # 16 nails, sharpened on my wheel. I gave a couple of extra sets
of these to fishing buds. A cork on the sharp end of each lets them sit nicely in
ones coat pocket.
The orange ones on the right are commercially made and have an extra hole in the
end where the spike is at, so they can store in ones pocket with the pointy ends of
each pushed into the body of the other one.
A very secluded honey hole about 20 miles from home that produces enough
10" gills to get my attention. Not to mention the occasional 12". When ice fishing,
and especially on secluded lakes, always and I mean always have your ice spikes in your pocket.
