LOTW – Top Three Lures

We’re headed to LOW, Dec. 28-29. Never fished the lake, running out of Ballards and using their service. I got out of the ice fishing business 7 years ago and sold all my gear. I’m not going to run out and buy too much stuff, but if I were to buy 3 lures for the trip, what should they be?

Thanks in advance for the advice!

Eric

1. Frozen shiner and a plain hook
2. Frozen shiner on a red lindy rattlin flyer
3. Glow red anything with meat

Stop sign: Red, Gold, and glow
Bobber, hook, and minnow
Demon Jig: Glow or pink
Lighting Spoon: Glow or pink

Jigging Rap in perch has also had it moments.

Glow red and gold Buckshot.

1/4 oz slender spoon in gold & some bright color tipped with minnow head.

some kind of jig with a live minnow on it unter a bobber or rattle reel.

1/4 oz slender spoon in your favorite color tipped with minnow head.

Glow Red Lindy Rattln Flyer and Glow Red Buckshot rattln spoon. Occasionally I’ll switch to gold, but 99% of the time glow red is by far the best producer.

I like the 1/8 or 3/16 oz varieties. Tip with a minnow head, we usually use fatheads.

Just got back and unfortunately I have no magic three. Bait will be provided so I won’t cover that.

Good news, some of the options are inexpensive:

Terminal tackle, splitshot and hooks(red is my favorite, other guys were using yellow)
1. Bobber, underneath demon jig white and pink or plain hook with split shot
One rod minimum or both if situation merits
2. Jigging – rattle and glo red. Since you asked for only three, maybe the Rattlin Flyer or a buckshot. FYI – I caught zero fish on both of these last trip but I would still pack them.
3. Jigging – Slender spoon 1/8oz. Again limited to only three lures you have to pick your color here. FYI – tried a couple colors and got skunked on these.

Wildcard – the above are my top three. That said my best jigging lure was a firetiger Lightning Spoon from CJ&S.

Cougareye – you got me thinking some more and I might change my recommendation. Since you got out of ice fishing will you have a flasher to use? If yes, I’ll stick with what I said earlier. If not, then I don’t know how to jig without.

One of our guys doesn’t really use a flasher and he out caught us last friday. Change out the two jig recommendations and add a vertical jig in some type of perch pattern and one in gold. He had this crappie sized vertical jig that had perch like bars on it. Caught more fish than anything else the first day. Second day was a different story.

Also experiment with depths. We found that 3″-6″ max off the bottom for passive presentations.

#1)Gold frosty
#2)Dead stick with a red hook

5/16 oz slender spoon
1/8 oz hot tamale
1/8 oz glitter jig

1 lindy flyer spoons
2 cicadas by reef runner
3 jb stop signs with glitter

Good luck!

Don’t forget the frozen shiners.

Gold has always worked fine for me. Make sure you have a flasher. Jig and minnow.

Frozen shiners have been brought up a few times. Ballards said they provide all bait, are frozen shiners generally part of their bag of tricks?

cougareye wrote:

Frozen shiners have been brought up a few times. Ballards said they provide all bait, are frozen shiners generally part of their bag of tricks?

I don’t know of any resorts that give them to their patrons. You’ll have to buy them up there at a bait shop. I think they almost always give fatheads.

I highly recommend it. They were about $5-6 per bag (2 doz?). Try them next to the fatheads and see what happens.