Enticing Stubborn Crappies of Fox Lake

With just an afternoon to get out on the ice, I invested my time to chase down a meal of crappies. As I pulled my sled passed guys along the beginning contour of the open basin I heard a lot of comments “yea, they just shut down”, “wow, it was hot this morning, now they’re just chasing”, and just simply “tough bite” Not the words of encouragement I was hoping to hear as I pulled my gear into the open tundra.
I made my way to the deeper edges of the crowd and started to hop hole to hole taking a peek with the locator. It didn’t take long to mark a few fish a couple feet off of the bottom in 16 fow. With some solid thick lines and a few flickers, I regained my focus. My habit is to chase the active fish and look for the aggressive bite. Today was no different and I opted for starting with a spoon. I watched my silver/blue slendor spoon vanish in the hole and continued watching with high expectations as it turned to watching a red line descend on the locator. Almost immediately, a crappie rose up about a foot and had a staring contest with the spoon. There I sat, working it fast, slow, falling, rising……and no cooperation.

Thinking it may be a little too much flutter action, I changed for another stand-by spoon – a Kastmaster. As quickly as it fell down to the school beneath me, I had that magical thump and put the first small crappie on the ice. Little did I realize at the time that would be a one fish wonder. I found myself 15-20 minutes later still working that same spoon with many crappies chasing up for a look; but only to be denied.
As I realized how much time I was wasting, I knew I needed to make some changes. I had fish that were showing signs of activity by chasing. They just were stubborn and wouldn’t commit.

So I went in a different direction and started presenting the color spectrum of CJS’s Shrimpos. I have to admit I was feeling a bit frustrated when I would get a fish and the NOTHING. After a few more minutes of watching my jig get chased around or feeling a very subtle latching onto, I changed colors again. Finally, I found some consistency with a Shrimpo smoke glitter.
Over the next 20 minutes or so I came to realize how many fish I was missing. You could feel them latch onto it, but there just wasn’t that thump. So again, I changed up to something in that color range, but different. I lowered a CJS Diamond jig with a 1” gulp minnow. Immediately, there was a good thump and a crappie soon came up the hole. Finding decent results, I stuck with it for a little while. Though most of the fish I caught were hooked just inside the lip. So, instead of hanging in there, I opted for a couple more changes. Drifting away from the natural pattern, I changed up jig colors and also the gulp color. It didn’t take much longer to have a combination put together that the crappies were going nuts for.

Too often we get stuck in a rut of presenting the same old thing, for way too much time. Like everyone else, I’ve had my moments of losing track of time and wishing I had made more changes throughout a day. It’s tough when you have semi-active fish lit up like a Christmas tree on the locator. We get stuck in the moment of this is the fish that’s going to bite. But having the discipline to know your investing too much time and be willing to stop and make a change can make all the differences in success.