CT Ice Fishing Crappie Report

Over the last week, I have been ice fishing with my wife for crappie in the afternoon/evenings on Lake Lillinonah in CT. We have had a very solid pattern going in that the fish were schooling up on the main lake basin in several portions of the lake. We were catching our fish in 24-30 FOW adjacent to old creek channels or the main river channel. Some evenings the fish would move and you would have to drill a bunch of holes to stay with the school and some evenings they would stay put. We caught all of our fish using 3″ Reins Bubbling Shaker worms in Kito Kito shad or glow white colors rigged on Zappu Cocho Cocho Tungsten Jigheads in 1/13 oz. on 4# Gamma Fluorocarbon Ice Line. Most fish were 10-13 inches with an occasional slab but we caught a ton of 12 inchers. The bigger fish were isolated away from the larger schools of 12 inchers and they were very slow to come in and commit. You definitely had to adjust your presentation with the bigger fish and jig the bait very subtle with minimum raises and they would just ease up to it and inhale it. We had a small front coming through one day and I decided to shoot a short video on what we were doing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jc0OTI68dk

hmmmmm…… look ma no hands….

nice very nice crappies!

Nice crappies and great video.

Didn’t look like much ice? Nice slabs.

nice looking slabs, always like to see reports from around the country.

The ice was only 5-6 inches. We had a warm spell of 40-50 degrees that messed up some lakes but now we are in single digit temps.

Awesome Slabs! Love the idea of using open water jigs under the ice.

where did you purchase the 3inch Bubbling Shaker Worms from? I checked the there site and smallest size I seen was the 4inch.

I’ve never seen anyone hold a rod like that, was pretty cool to watch. Pretty cool that the fish were hitting baits like that, we don’t get those kind of bites here.

Very neat, love aggressive slabs. I bet these fish would crush a bigger jigging rap. – QB