I’ve always been told that when you have the slush the ice doesn’t freeze nearly as solid and you want to make sure you have an extra inch or two compared to what you would normally go on.

If you head about 2 hours north there are people starting to fish in some of the bays in Winona MN. I know I wont be heading out on the ice for at least a few more days but I talked to some guys today as they got off the ice and they said there was 3 inches.

Hey Ed. I was out on the finger lakes as well the last few days although I don’t know what one you were on it was the same for all of them. The bite was crazy on Saturday but Sunday and Monday was almost non-existent. We kept a total of 10 between 5 guys, not cause we hadn’t caught more but that is all we really wanted. There were however plenty of people keeping a lot more and those lakes were fished very hard this past week. I would say just give it some time to recover from all the pressure they received. But dead sticking did work well for us when we had decent sized Swedish pimples with crappie minnows for perch. As for pannies, we did smallest jigs we had with waxies. My advice would be just avoid that place for a bit until it has a chance to recover and then hit it before all the crowds get there which is much easier said than done.
Good luck

It probably was the depth you pulled them up from, but another possibility is low oxygen levels. When there is a low oxygen level it causes nitrogen gas to build up behind the eyes of fish but unless you were fishing in a small body of water or an area with a lot of decaying plants it most likely was depth.

What type of Floro do you use? I tried spiderwire one year and was not very happy with it, it wasn’t very durable and it would start to fray easier then mono did for me but that could easily have just been the brand

Are there any places that are good fishing but not a lot of people? I have no problem walking in order to have a spot all to myself

Thanks a lot! I’ll make sure to give it a shot