Fish w/ lockjaw

anyone else having a rough go of it this year unusually?

excluding some farm pond fishing, i’m finding my regular haunts to be full of fish but having a hard time convincing them to bite. i’m having to travel alot further than i’d like to get a bite going.

don’t know what it is. i’ve thrown everything in the tackle box at them.

i can get them to rise up stare, i’ve done everything in the ice fishing book to get them to bite and notta.

anyone else ever run into this.

my first thoughts are to go find active fish instead….but i have this stubborn need to catch these fish.

water is too murky to shove a camera down there and see whats up…thats also frustrating.

Yup I’m with you. Hit a lake up north Friday night Nothing! ( that never happens. I may not come home with anything but I don’t think I have ever gone out and not had a bite!

Saturday up @ 5am as it’s a sunrise sunset bite, Set up in 40-45 feet of water. Marcum was lit up like a christmas tree in 3 of my holes. NOTHING! talked to other guys around same thing. headed in to have a drink and lunch Fish had moved to a few other holes set up by 3 to prep for the evening bite, and again NOTHING!!!! Minnows, Waxies, Spikes, Spoons, Gill Pills, Diamonds jigs, Ratso, Shrimpos, Mini- Merts, lil’ Cecils, Glow Devils, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few others. mono and braid. I threw it all at them in just about every color, and bait combo out there. NOTHING!! this week really had me thinking that’s for sure.

how did they react to your presentation?

it didn’t matter what they did. i would lower to the bottom…start bringing it up and as usual, i would get past the structure and i’d have 2 or 3 marks following the jig up…i would stop, i would lightly jig, i would raise them up 3 or 4 feet at times, then one of them would raise up to the jig…to the point where i’d take my eyes off the vex and watch the springbobber waiting for it to go down….nothing….sometimes they’d rush up to it and still, nothing. i’ve ice fished for years and never had the thick red mark completely take over my jig not bite it.

i left the smallest jig i’ve got sitting there dead sticking while i jigged another pole a few feet away to look over and see it bending down and i set it…i don’t miss gill bites with such a tiny jig but i frequently miss crappie bites so i know thats what was down there…i missed him….the only bite i had yesterday.

never been skunked before.

About the same. I tried dropping it to the bottom, and when I did that I got nothing. I would drop it right to them and vary my jigging. That didn’t seem to matter, I was about 50/50 on aggressive, light, and nothing. Half the time I would get a follower. Sometime 2 feet some times 8 feet then they would just stop. game was over. Once they would suspend I would try a little more jigging thinking that would put them over the edge but I got nothing. they would just sit there and then head back down to the bottom. I wish I would have had a camera to see what was going on, because I was clueless this weekend. One guy I talked to had 5 hours and 3, 12 inch crappies to show for it, but that was it. He said they came on 3 different presentations. on on a hook and a minnow under a bobber.

Same bite here also, but with some success.We switched to plain bronze hook and waxies with some better action on gills.
It was tough with the weather this past weekend.

I was out the last 3 days. Fished 3 different places on pool 9. Lots of lookers, few takers. No matter what jig or color, marks show up right away and then just slowly back off. This A.M. had lots of marks, no bites. Put on a black ratso, marks started rising as the jig fell. Small gill nailed it. Ah ha, finally the right jig. Not another bite on it.

This is a classic case of the midwinter blahs. There is less oxygen present in the water and the fish are sluggish or they may be full of some over abundant food source. We are experiencing some tough bites here too and what you need to do is be patient and wait for the feeding windows. They are short but can be great this time of year. Been there and caught not much. I’ve also taken limits by changing up and fishing after dark, and moving or just listen to the radio until they bite. This is why they call it fishing and not catching.

This year for me has been just what you described. Early ice was good for me with no lock jaw, but the last month it has been what you described to a T.

Yesterday I had fish below the shack all day. I tried every size, shape and color combination I had in the box and still only sniffers. The bite for us has been spotty during the day and then at dusk you get 30 to 60 minutes of active fish. That window has been between 5 PM and 7 PM for me with a few stragglers coming before and after.

I’m just gonna keep trying new things and buying new jigs. (My thinks I need more) They will eventually give me a few hot days of action.

Have you experimented with line type and/or poundage?

1lb test micro ice. on the camera i can’t even see its there.