Mid-Winter Funk

I fished the Frontenac contest and the Lake City contest. Both times I didn’t mark any fish. In fact, nobody caught a fish during the Lake City contest…and, we were sitting on top of 30 fish cribs.

What can one do to get the fish to bite? Would Reel-Weeds be an option?

Thank you,
Mike

Ok, i can’t help myself…

First off, you are sitting on structure (30 cribs) and you are asking if adding more structure (reel weeds) will make the fish bite?

Second, you weren’t marking any fish, but want to know what you can do to make the fish bite? I dunno about you, but i have never caught any fish where i wasn’t marking any fish…

Well here’s my advice. Go find the fish Drill holes until you mark something and once you do, drill more holes to find the best concentration of fish. Just because there are fish cribs in a spot doesn’t mean they hold fish. A lot of the time all the small fish are holed up tight in the structure and the bigger ones are nearby, but if that structure doesn’t have any food, or there’s a lack of oxygen the fish will be elsewhere.

I have no sympathy for you not catching any if you went out and sat in the same spot all day and didn’t mark any fish. Just seems like a waste of time to me

That’s what I thought. We did move around but, again, no fish on the flasher.

I was hoping there was something that could have been tried to get the fish to perk up.

Oh well, it was still a decent day on the ice.

Mike

Also, I wasn’t looking for sympathy…just information. I guess your terse response is what I am going to get.

I apologize trekr, didn’t mean to jab ya that bad. I actually refrained from saying anything the first time I came across it, but couldn’t help myself when i saw it again.

Great bunch of guys here, but when you ask a question like that they are going to get some jabs in at ya.

I mean come on, asking “what does a guy gotta do to get a bite” when you aren’t marking any fish is like asking a nun if she wants to join you for a rendezvous at a strip club.

A better question might be “since there are no fish in these 30 fish cribs we are fishing, where would be a better place to start”, then once you find some fish maybe we can help you catch them.

Have a good one trekr and good luck finding some fish.

Some days it’s tough, we drilled over 100 holes before we found fish yesterday. Im sore today, but it was worth it because we did finally find them. It doesn’t always work that way. Somedays you drill and drill and never find them, that’s fishing, but at least you can say you tried.

I guess that’s my only advice. Drill. Drill. and drill some more. That’s all you can do.

Think of it like open water fishing. Who in their right mind would go out on the water and continuously cast over and over in the same spot not catching any fish? if we saw someone doing this we would call them an idiot. This is essentially what people are doing when they go out ice fishing, drill 2 holes and sit there all day w/out moving. They are casting in the same spot, all day long.

That’s probably why nobody got a fish on Saturday, nobody moved around. I have no excuse for not follow the strategy. I will remember for all contests.

Here’s what I can tell about that spot for the LC contest.
There are NO fish there. You can move around all you want want within that circle and you’ll have a better chance of winning the lotto.
I fished that for almost 40 years now. Back in the day, before the nuke plant, they caught tons of fish there.
As a kid, I’d go to that spot after school and catch 4-5 nice fish in an hour.
I can count the number of fish on 1 hand that have been caught there in the last 20 years during the contest.
The fish just aren’t there in the winter. Which is about the same for all of the lake. They move up near the warmer water.
I didn’t go to the contest this year but usually do just to BS and buy some raffle tickets to support the sportsman’s club. I put a line in the water and basically forget about it.