I was able to make it out this weekend on some Mississippi backwaters for a few hours and it felt great. The weather was great, and the fishing wasn’t too bad either. I tried a few different spots, found 3-5″ of ice, but found the most active fish 12-18 ft down in about 24 feet of water. I was fishing for sunnies/crappies but had one fish on that gave my noodle rod a great workout, but broke my line after about a 3 minute tussle, just a few feet below the hole, I never got a look at it :(.
Other than that I caught a smattering of panfish, nothing huge, but definitely had a handful like below that could have been kept. Decided to let them all go this time, much to my Grandma in law’s disapproval :).
The hot bait for me was a gold tungsten drop jig(I think that’s what it is), with a pink mustache worm(with one of the tails pinched off). I was easily catching 2 or 3 fish for every fish caught around me, everyone else was using waxies or minnows. I didn’t try too many different jigs, probably a half dozen or so, but I tried black/red/pink/orange/yellow plastics, pink was definitely the top producer, with red a distant second. Waxies caught 0 fish, crappie minnows had three bites, two fish on that broke my line and a missed third bite…I obviously need to work on my bobber game.
