Downsizing your presentation

[FI Guide]

During these last few days where the temps have plunged into the below zero catorgory it seemed that the fish just completely turned off. This same situation has happened to many of us on our fishing voyages when that dreaded cold front moved in and the fish had lock jaw. This happened to me on tuesday morning while walleye fishing and fish didnt have the overall aggressiveness like they had the day before. Watching the vex and seeing the red line come up to your bait and making a beeline right back down to the bottom again with the fish being picky something had to be done to have a successful day.

I remembered what Matt Johnson said about downsizing when he was fishing for crappies and I thought give it a try i went from a size 10 jig to a size 4 and switched to a crappie minnow under an ice buster bobber. This proved to be the ticket to get those picky fish to come up and eventually strike at the presentation. While my deadsticking rod was producing i did the same thing to my jigging rod and switched to a smaller jig and the fish also hit that presentation as well.

All in all when the fish are in a negative phase try downsizing your presentation or go with a deadstick and finese the fish up into your house.

[ivegottabite]

This is great info. I usually never thought about this but last weekend when I was out, I had to downsize to get the perch to bite also.

Some people never think of doing this(I was one of them) but it does pay off!

[FI Guide]

yes i feel that downsizing is one of the best presentations that get overlooked by fisherman.

[Jim Hudson]

I am in the same boat as you fellas, or should I say ice chunk? Anyways, something I do is always have a rod set up with a downsized presentation. If I see fish come in on my electronics and they dont commit I can quickly send this down to see if they will take it.

Another thing I have been toying around with the past couple of years is the number of lines I have in a given area. I am convinced that if you use less lines you increases the odds of catching fish. I have seen many times during these situations where someone would leave a shack to fish another hole and bang the other person gets on a bite. And as you get back to the shack to fish your old hole, everything goes cold again. So if you are not catching fish, but marking them and if you can, move away from one another to see if you can get some bites.

Also, on the other side of the spectrum, I have found upsizing from a normal presentation will put bigger fish on the ice when you have periods of steady weather or before the front approaches. I have caught some of my bigger 'eyes using this technique and it usually involves having some type of larger spoon on the end of my line.

Just my thoughts. Good luck everyone!!!!

[andy j]

JKH431, this is a good point about being close to a buddy fishing, I know for a fact if you give them to much to choose from they can get turned off, I learned this alot by underwater camaras. Sometimes little things like your buddy dropping his rod to fast or bringing his rod up to fast will turn fish off or spook them off, I alway try to slow everything down when fish are inactive this include slowing down the jig as I bring it to the bottom. any thing you show a walleye that doesn't look natural when they are not aggressive will turn the fish in the other direction.