John Stears and I headed out to Lake Zumbro this morning. Our goal was to catch some nice crappies through the ice. John had not been ice fishing on Lake Zumbro for a few years and was hoping to rediscover the techniques used to put some of those big brutes on ice.
We settled into a shoreline area that had steep dropoffs, settling into 23 FOW. After drilling a couple holes for each of us, we put the transducer from the Marcum into the first hole and immediately saw fish near the bottom. A Diamond jig from Custom Jigs was sent down to about the 20 ft. level. Working the jig very slowly with a slight jiggle resulted in a quick bite and the first crappie of the day was on the ice. We tipped our jigs with waxies or spikes. Minnows were producing some fish for a few other people.
Other crappies followed quickly, but our action eventually slowed down. There were lots of lookers that we just couldn’t convert into takers. We still managed to turn several looks into bites throughout the morning, ending up with around 30 nice fish. Most of the fish were released except for a meal of these tasty critters, the largest measuring 12 1/2 inches.
Some of the fish were quite high in the water column, as much as 15 ft. off bottom, but most were about 2-5 ft. off. The biters could be coaxed into taking the baits by working them upward slowly, with fish often following for 5-10 ft. before taking a swipe at the lure. It was an extremely windy day as well making a shelter a necessity. The morning showed that fish can still be caught on this lake even though the conditions were not optimum. Thanks John for a great time of fishing and fun. Hope we can do it again soon!
