Has anyone noticed this as a winter pattern for tannic stained waters.
Fished a lake this past weekend that has very dark tannic stained water with maybe 4″ of snow cover. Fished a basin of 20′-25′ of water. All the active crappies seemed to be right under the ice. Basically, hole hopping in 25ft with only 4ft of line out. My theory is/was due to the dark water and snow cover the active fish were up top where there was more available light.
Any thoughts?
They may have been up high picking bugs off the bottom of the ice cap. I seen crappies right under the hole in the ice many times and seen bugs come to the surface in the hole at the same time. Winter has way more bug activity than most people consider and cold crappies are really opportunistic and have no qualms about following the food up in the water column. The snow and ice cap provided some filtered light along with the stained water so being up that high where the light is a bit brighter doesn’t bother them much.
A bunch of years ago a friend and I hit a popular Mississippi backwater area and never let out more than three or four feet of line all morning. Never even turned on a flasher. The spot was packed with people marking fish deep and that’s where they fished. We went from hole to hole that were unoccupied and jigged a couple minutes and popped fish regular. Its fun when they are high up like that and if they are decent fish really give a guy a wake-up call at the hit. Fun stuff.
Have done this fishing a slough in WC MN a few years ago. Slough was about 12ft deep and visibility was crap, maybe 10″. Fish had been using most of the column up until it got cold/windy/cloudy around Xmas but it was getting hit hard and seemed like it might be fished out from pressure.
Was hole hopping without much success when I just barely noticed a flicker at the top of my flasher screen. I let out about 2ft of line and within a minute I had a 12″ crappie on the ice. Fish were cruising around so close to the bottom of the ice that they barely registered on the flasher cone.
Others struggled with it but the pattern continued all wknd for me and figured the same as Tom, chasing bugs/minnows up there.
just barely noticed a flicker at the top of my flasher screen.
This is where 2d sonar on ice shines. It may flicker but that flicker stays on screen long enough for you to notice.
Been chasing those high marks in the metro for a few weeks now as well. Good post!
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