To say the fish were biting aggressively would be an understatement. I headed out Friday AM with two buddies to a new lake for myself, and I came away impressed. Three guys, 3 1/2 hours, 300 fish caught. 56 – 58 degree water has really turned these fish to the aggressive side.
I was using a 1/16 oz Black Flu-Flu and Rich and Bill were using ice fishing jigs, but I am sure it would not have mattered. I actually was getting the bigger fish on just the plain flu-flu with no bait. I tried tossing beetle spins, and other various plastics but nothing would hit them aggressively. I did happen to “catch” two nice sized (8″+) sunnies on Northland Tackle Slurpie. I could feel them hit but couldn’t catch them, the two I did manage to catch, was by accidentally snagging them under the belly.
We probably caught 5 sunnies for every 1 crappie, but when you would find a school of crappies come through you would probably catch 2 or 3… Rich kept 10 crappies for dinner (8″ – 10″) and I kept 10 sunnies (6 1/2 – 8 1/2) for the frying pan. Every sunnie I filleted did not have eggs or was a male, so looks like the best is yet to come.
Now in the time to get out with the kids or get out and experiment with your presentations and shake off the rust. We not only shook off the rust, we got a good workout hauling in the fish. Remember to practice selective harvest for our future fisherpersons.