suuuuuuuuuper lethargic fish on small waters

I did a little exploring on some kettle morraine lakes with a friend yesterday and we were on enormous numbers of fish all day with 4-10 fish on the graph most of the time (broke down and borrowed a vex yesterday), problem is they would follow everything and very few at all would commit, tried everything under the sun from size 16 marmooskas with the smallest chicken skin strip I had (my fav reluctant fish setup) all the way up to smaller jigging spoons, everything had the fish following and until we gave up on the potholes and hit rock lake we had nothing to show for our work, ended up keeping 20 on rock and giving my other five to an older guy but even there it was a constant battle of changing baits until around 3:45 when the fish kind of turned on, really a humbling experience but has anyone else had these kind of issues on small (20 acre or less) waters and is there a solution, even though the fish weren’t cooperating and I had the mother of all head colds teaming up with a wicked hangover the pristine scenery and solitude of the county forest lakes has me hooked just gotta dial it in

When you cleaned the fish did you examine their stomach contents? On castle rock the camera showed swarms of insects swimming/emerging…enough to feed an army of fish.

no I didn’t, out of curiosity what did the bugs look like midges, bloodworms, usually when I cut the stomachs open I find more of a brown mud but if I pick it apart they’re tiny midges

They were small and buzzed the camera with the leds on due to darkness and staining. I’m not an entomolgist so I can’t even guess as to what they were.

I ran into the same situation this last weekend with some perch. The few I did get to commit had stomachs packed with small bluegills and helgermites (dragon fly larva). They’ve been eating them things all winter. Not sure how they are finding them. It seems every other weekend the bite is off, no matter what the weather, thye are eager to bite one weekend and not the other.

Absolutely. Most of my fishing is done on 6-8 acre lakes. When the fish are doing that, something in your presentation is wrong. Either the bait, the color, or the way you are jigging.

A couple things to try.
1. A natural color. Forget white maggots, white chicken skin, flashy spoons, and use a brown or black plastic.
2. Rest the rod against your knee if you are sitting, or hold it against your body if you are kneeling. This will give you lots of control.

Work the fish and see what they want. If they are coming up quickly, don’t stop whatever you are doing and they will likely hit it. Sometimes you have to kill the bait just before they get on it and hold it absolutely still. Sometimes you have to make them chase it up 2-3 feet before they will commit.

Whatever you do… DO NOT LOWER THE ROD. I’ve found that 9 times out of 10, if you lower the bait when a fish is looking at it the fish will go straight back down to the bottom. Its not natural.

When fish are acting like you said, I fish aggressive and move. I’ll jig aggressive 1-2 feet above the fish and if they do not come up and hit it, I’ll move holes until I find some that will.

I have spent lots of time my self exploring some of those pot holes and I have ran into the same thing in the past. I wish I had the answer for you for how to make them all commit, but I don’t. I have had days where I do really well and days where it seems like I cant find an active fish. The first thing I do is start switching plastics, colors and style, if that doesn’t get me anywhere I will change from a horizontal presentation to a vertical presentation, and often I will hang the plastic off it horizontally. If I still cant get them to cooperate I will reach for some larva and usually a small gold jig. Not sure if that will help at all but with all those lakes so close don’t get to set on spending to much time on one lake with no active fish just try exploring another one.

I have found some really nice gills in some of those lakes but it took some time and some moving but it can be really rewarding when you find the ones your looking for.

Tried the natural stuff brown duppies black purist you name it, same result could drag their butts up 2-4 ft and they’d either drop to the bottom of freeze up, usually I jig down from 2-4 ft above where I suspect the fish are and work back up, I’ll do that two cycles a hole and move, maybe the down jigging put em off but usually dropping into the fish too quick seems to result in less fish for me personally, even tried dead sticking with the occasionally twitch, would oxygen depletion possibly be an issue? both the small lakes we hit were around 15 acres and 20-24 feet deep at max, didn’t drill up any dead fish and the few dinks we caught looked healthy, the weather shouldn’t have been that bad I had a slowly dropping barometer in the early AM partially cloudy, west wind, maybe the quick warm up had em in a funk, lost for answers

I’ll be back, I’m going to take this first run as a learning experience, I’m really looking forward to ice out and getting a canoe into these lakes, I’m already scheming how to weld up a canoe trailer for a bicycle, is there pike in many of the lakes other than horseshoe???

I kinda figured that senerio out and I beleive that the moon phase has had an effect this past week. the bite went from all day to starting at about 2 to 6pm so Ihavent gone out until late.I found that glow jigs with a couple white spikes work and if the ones that come up and wont commit i go down to the bottom and get the ones off the bottom to commit.It has worked on 5 lakes that i fish. I tried plastic nothing but ive never tried chicken skin will put that on my try list for today I think that the fish will get back to a normal pattern in a few days it happens every full moon for me those little buggers must be vampires lol

Did you catch any nice fish?

Did you have a camera and see the fish you were marking?

If no to both, then my guess is that you found the mother load of tiny bluegills. Seen it many times and it’s extremely frustrating until you realize what the marks you are trying to catch are.

I have found some decent northern in some of those small lakes, its worth throwing out a couple of tip ups when your out there!

Doesn’t sound like a small water only issue to me. Sometimes they just aren’t biting. You can stick with it all day through location moves and bait changes to no avail. When I sense this situation I usually bail unless the whole day/trip centers around fishing. Then I keep going through the motions hoping for small upswings in activity.