Mid-winter slump - Ice Fishing Forum - Ice Fishing Forum - Page 2

Jimmy Jones wrote:

With the fish being cold blooded and the water temps under the ice fairly static, I think the feeding window in a 24 hour day is relatively small. They still need to eat, but not as much. I also feel that the barometer influences the bite window and how aggressive the fish may be.

When I still fished on the ice, I did as someone has mentioned and focused on those marks seen at mid-water column. Those generally were feeding crappies that hit pretty darned hard in spite of the barometer. I think too many people use bottom lock and stay zeroed in on the fish on the bottom when they are usually the ones with the tightest lips.

Another area that too many people fail to look at is immediately under the ice, in which case a flasher is useless. Dead and dying bugs will float up in the water column and lodge under the ice sheet. <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>Crappies are opportunists when it comes to food and have no aversion at all to picking the dead/dying bugs off the underside of the ice and will often cruise within that foot to 4 foot of water under the sheet dining heavily on insect. Tyler Holm and I hit a backwater spot one day that had maybe 40 people fish it. We walked out with nothing, but our rods rigged with a glow red jigging spoon and a white Noogie plastic on it, and spent an hour fishing in vacant holes, catching <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>crappie after crappie. None were small, all very decent eating sized <em class=”ido-tag-em”>crappies of 11″ or more. Nobody seemed to notice that neither of us “reeled” a fish up or that we never had more than four feet of line off the end of the rods. Our clue was the debris that was found in freshly drilled holes over maybe 30 feet of water. The debris was insect carcasses but noone took notice to that at all and everyone was stuck on a bucket looking at flashers zeroed in on the bottom eight or ten feet of water.

Tyler and I kept zero fish that morning. The biggest fish I think we saw landed by anyone else was maybe a five inch sunfish, or a perch of similar length. The moral here is that if one is not paying attention to the little things that come with even drilling out holes, or being in touch with the entire water column, it could very well appear that the fish are in a slump.

Jimmy……. i had a wise old spear chucker…..yea someone a wee bit wiser then me!!! tell me the same thing about pike later in the year. pike are also looking for an easy dinner and will cruise just under the ice.

he said you dont need to see bottom, setup in 17-20 ft of water off structure, decoy down 3-4 ft. there looking for hurt soon to die fish!! i have however not tried it yet!

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