With winter giving us a yo- yo affect we get a little cold weather to give us some ice only to receive warm weather and winds to make most ice unsafe. While checking ice conditions on a daily basis I have been able to stay on top of a couple of areas that have been able to hold safe ice. Over the last couple of days we have been capable of producing some good catches of whitefish on some safe ice that has locked in to a secluded area.
With taking extreme caution making sure we have safe ice to fish from I have been able to have two successful days of fishing. We targeted a number of different depths and also using different jigging techniques and found the same number of fish anywhere we fished it really came down to our jigging presentation to maximize on the numbers of fish that we caught.
Knowing and understanding how these fish react to your jigging presentations really plays a big part in your success and how many fish you catch at the end of a days fishing. We generally use a rig that consists of using either a spoon or a jigging Rapala on the bottom and a ice spoon tied above around a foot above.
The whitefish over the past number of years have been feeding on a relatively new invasive to the great lakes the round goby. The goby lives on the bottom near and around rocky areas so we are generally targeting these areas but also the whitefish feeds on blood worms that live in the muddy basin areas so both areas are targeted during the ice fishing season to stay on the fish on a daily basis.
Paul Delaney
Late-Eyes SportFishing
920-421-0896
Nice job guys
Paul, thanks for sharing some great information on the feeding preferences for the whitefish. Those are some fun hard fighting fish!
Awesome report Paul! Have never done it, but reading your report gets me excited for the day I finally do. Thanks for sharing.
Joel
Great report one just cant beat Whitefish action with a stick! There a blast to catch!
We have a group of ten going to the bay the last weekend of Feb. Can’t wait.