I made it up to Marshmiller this past weekend on Friday and Saturday morning for a few hours and the bite is on! 
On Friday, I didn’t do as well in terms of marked fish to catch ratio. I was being too stubborn in switching out jigs. I insisted that I could alter my presentation to entice strikes. I caught about 1/3 of the fish I marked in the center of my Marcum cone. In about two hours I brought home around a dozen nice bluegills for a hot grease release. As always on Marshmiller there is a lot of sorting required, but the run on size seemed better than recent years. I was set up in 10 FOW close to a weed edge.
The posted photo doesn’t really give justice to the bluegills. They were by no means in the bull category, but there is a nice population of 7” – 8” bluegills out there. The biggest for the morning hit the tape at 8.5”.
After reflecting on my morning, I knew I needed to go back to fishing 101 and not try to force feed an offering. I marked so many fish on Friday, I kept saying, “One of these guys has to like what I have on the platter.” It’s easy to become lazy when sitting over a large pod of fish and take the flock shooting approach, but as we all know it’s not always the best approach.
Saturday, I told myself I was going to keep refining my presentation and offering until I got them dialed in. As a benchmark, I started off using what I tried on Friday. I was using a orange horizontal darter jig tipped with a wax worm. I had similar results. I started hooking fish, but I watched many approach my bait and move along.
I really got lucky, because my Plan B panned out. I put on an orange/chartreuse moon glow grub and started to hook nearly all the fish that approached the center of my Marcum cone. The big difference on Saturday was crappie bite. In the hour I spent on the ice I caught around 15 crappies and half dozen bluegills. I thought the crappie bite was going to slow down as the sun broke out over the trees, but it wasn’t the case. When I left around 8:00 AM there was still a strong crappie bite going.
I had a chance to demo my new Strikemaster Lazer hand auger and was very pleased. I found about 4” of ice. When the ice is less than a foot thick, I find I use the hand auger. It’s quieter which is nice when fishing shallow water and with less ice and snow to insulate the noise. If the thought of a hand auger makes your muscles ache, you need to take a Lazer for a spin, they really are an effortless hand ice auger.
Now is a great time to get out on the ice. As always, be safe.
