So tonight the bottom 4 to 5 ft is covered with I assume plankton or bugs as the helix and vexilar both showing Mark’s all over. Fishing is slow compared to last night when I didn’t see this? Does this affect fish biting? Alot of algae around the top of the holes as the image shows. Never seen this before?
20200123_155953.jpg
How deep are u fishing? Same as last night?
I have had that and it seems to correlate to poor fishing when I’ve experienced it
Same spot same depth 11.2 ft.
What’s the bottom content at that 11 foot hole? What you’re seeing on the bottom could be blood worm activity or as you suspect some other bug life waking up when the sun starts down. Also, that green could be a plant based plankton, phytoplankton, that active in huge amounts right now and could be attracting or be in concert with bug activity right now. Some forms of phytoplankton come on so strong that it can made the water unattractive to fish too and they move away from it. Personally I’d move to an area where this isn’t taking place.
Silt bottom. Thanks for the info. Looks like time to pack the house up and head to a different lake.
As soon as the sun came up, it all disappeared the plankton. Do you think the whole lake is like this?
Different areas of another bottom type or different depths may or may not play host to a bloom like this, its hard to tell. The same goes for insect and blood worm hatches.
Another factor can be how fertile the water is. If its full of nitrates this can go on year round. Lots of prairie lakes, pothole type of waters, see this occur often, but even metro lakes of large size will see this occur once in a while given all the nitrates that go in the water from fertilizers.
As soon as the sun came up, it all disappeared the plankton. Do you think the whole lake is like this?
Agree with Tom it’s hard to tell. I just know that if and when it happens it will probably not be very good fishing. On the small lake that I ice fish crappies a lot, it is usually not the entire lake if you move enough you can get away from it.
Thanks guys I pulled it off the lake and heading somewhere else. Hopefully with better luck😊. Good luck to everyone
Something people might want to try when the gunk is present in the water column and you’re seeing some sort of bug activity…..those bugs can die and float up and lodge right under the ice. While fishing may not be so hot down a ways it may be red hot right under the ice. I’ve seen this many times and simply got away from people and fished vacant open holes being super quiet and not moving much more than the rod tip, fishing a lift from two feet under the ice lip to right at the ice and caught nice crappies and sunfish while they were picking the critters off the ice’s underside.
Years ago a friend and I stopped at a backwater community hole on the Nelson dike road. Nice day and the water had some crap in it but everyone was just not catching a thing. We went and got a rod apiece, nothing else other than a small tackle box for the pocket and a forceps, and went back to play in open vacated holes in and amounst the 75 or so people there. I don’t think either of us let out more than 4 feet of line. We hammered crappies and did the cr thing. Had a riot. We didn’t make any friends in doing this but we had a great hour or so of super fishing. As soon as people started dragging crap and gathering around some of the holes we were bouncing back and forth to QUIETLY finding fish the action shut right off. This just shows that many times people are missing fish because they don’t check the entire water column and use those electronics too much when they should be using some mental acumen. There was no way any locator would have found these fish where they were hitting, but given the right set of circumstances fish will venture and hit right under the ice and that’s one place 99% of even accomplished ice anglers won’t try because they don’t see fish on a locator.
I’ll bet Tyler remembers that day well. JB Jigging Gem-n-Eye 1/16 ounce glow red, white micro nuggie.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
