ok im very new to ice fishing , only been out 3 times , caught 2 fish in them 3 times, is there any certian bait , or tactic you guys use to fish , as in jigging or just throwing a minnow in the hole and letting it sit , any info is greatly appriciated , im tired of getting skunked ,
Matt
Active Member
I'm by no means an expert on ice fishing, but I think I do ok out there. There are a ton of different baits and presentations that work well... but my go-to jig this season has been a tiny gold diamond jig, tipped with either a couple waxies, soft plastic finesse tail, or a minnow head. Yea, I said minnow HEAD... not minnow. For some reason, a lot of fish that will shy away from a whole minnow just cannot resist eating a minnow head. The gold diamond jig has been my bluegill, crappie, and perch slayer. If I'm going after bigger fish, I'll try something like a jigging rapala tipped with a minnow. I've yet to land a walleye through the ice but I've lost probably half a dozen close to the hole. I've also caught some jumbo perch on the jigging rapala.
Presentation is always a little different, depending on the mood of the fish. Here's where the underwater camera comes into play. You get to see live action of what the fish like and don't like. Sometimes they like the bait pulled up away from them, sometimes they like it stirring up the mud, sometimes they just like it sitting completely still. Presentation is something that you just adjust on a trip-by-trip basis. One thing that seems pretty consistent, though, is that aggressive jigging will pull the fish in... but most of the time I have to slow it way down, almost to a twitch, to get them to bite it once they charge in.
Above all, the most important thing is just being in the right spot. When you find a good school of fish, you can usually catch them on any number of baits.
Here's what I pounded the crappies with this past weekend:
my last trip out every one around me was catching fish , our holes were even with in a foot of each other , same bait , presented same way did everything the same , but i got one bite all night and that bite was the fish i caught , maybe i just suck at ice fishing
The red tail on that diamond jig came in a pack of K&E Moon Jigs that I bought up at Bass Pro Shops. So far, I cannot find packs of these tails anywhere online. The K&E website doesn't even mention or show them with the moon jigs. I did however see that they are provided with their Whip'r Knocker series jigs. I just sent an email to K&E asking where I can purchase these tails because they are lethal on panfish!