my quick background of the lake: this was my first time fishing hard water on rush. my family owns a cabin on the lake and we fish pannies all summer long, yet all we can catch is blugills and fingerling eyes. they always told me of the ‘glory days’ of crappies, but i have never caught them with any significance.
yesterday i headed up and hit the ice around 130. it was packed when i showed up. i decided to try the point north off wilson island. i was around 30fow and hooked into some really nice slabs suspended. i was hitting them ALL day, i couldnt even get my 2nd line in the water because i couldnt put the first rod down long enough. i caught upwards of 30 slabs around 8in+ and 2 sunnies. (before you flame me, just know that i released every single one of them)
i tried some red and pink demons and they were working ok, but i found those new gill pills in the glow color worked awesome! minnows and shrimpo bodies didnt go over well, i had better luck with waxies. i had my scout2 down there and saw them come in, take a close look and back off, so i switched back to the waxies.
as far as the ice was concerned, it was 14″ of good ice, there was a lot of SUVs and small pickups out there. i left my 1/2 ton on shore, and hoofed it out there. some guys were rolling out their 3/4 ton deisels.. guess they had less to lose than me!
oh yeah, not sure if i was on a goofy spot, but i thought i intially setup really deep, despite the fact i was slaying them all day long. heres the weird part, they shutoff around 530-600. when fishing the metro lakes, thats usually when we have a large run. so im not sure if i was too deep or what, but all day my vex was solid red from 20-30 fow, and then at sundown they disappeared.
-hunter