Hop, skip, and a jump....

[CrappieJohn]

With us being smack in the middle of the fall rush for panfish, trying new things sometimes takes the back seat to the tried and true. And I am here to tell you that you may be missing the boat!

Now I love my plastics, no doubt. And when things get tough I can figure out a producer by combining a couple of several plastics tactics. Yet when the bite is on a tear and catching fish seems almost sinfully easy, I am prone to snooping around to see if maybe something is even a better bait or even to use a bait during a hot bite for comparison purposes. Sometimes I'll try a bait simply because it is out-of-season and I want to know if it has any business in open water when it is meant to be used during the hard water period.

For a while now I have been playing with a 1/16 jigging spoon commonly used for ice fishing. I have been using this in glo red and tipping it with a waxie....just like in ice fishing. Does it work? Oh yes! What I am finding is that it doesn't have to be fished purely vertical to be a surefire fish getter.

I have been casting these, counting them down and fishing them in what I call the "hop,skip and jump" retreive. When the bait is at the depth at which I want to begin bringing it back, I give the rod a subtle twitch to "hop" the bait and then let it drop a second before I repeat this. The "skip" portion of this retrieve comes by letting this bait fall to the bottom and bring it back by slowly skipping it over the bottom, just barely allowing it to touch. Then there is the "jump". Again, with the bait at the bottom, I give it a solid lift (12" to a couple feet) which causes the bait to literally jump off the bottom and travel a couple feet before free falling to the bottom once again. Take up the slack and repeat.

Now obviously a person is not going to throw one of these baits into a wood pile or weed bed and expect to keep it on the line for long, but when the fish are on the outside of these key structures or can be found on breaks or points, I am finding this method of fishing to be deadly. Rocks can pose a few hang-ups but by using the electric, one can quietly manuever around and get freed up most of the time. Remember I mentioned trying something as a comparison? This method outfished my plastic by four to one easily.

I have been using the glo red in this particular bait with extreme effectiveness. Glo blue and glo purple have been tried in other ice tackle profiles and have worked when vertically jigged. Hopefully I will get these other colors soon to see if they too will draw fish when used as I have just described. I can't see any reason why they would not produce.

We are looking at transition fish right now and a person has to stay inventive and flexible in how they are approached. In too many instances tackle is assumed to have one primary use. Sold as ice tackle does not mean that open water use is not viable. You'll never know if you never try, will you? When you eliminate the confines of a hole in the ice, a whole new world of possible uses comes to light.

We all know that first ice is the best of the best, right? Well, how about late pre-ice? Try dropping some ice tackle down there now and see what happens. I'm willing to bet it will open up a lot of eyes that have been closed to the idea.

[Matt Johnson]

Good piece of info Tom. Unique application of the jigging spoon.

We often times find ourselves using ice fishing tackle throughout the open water periods at different situations and for different conditions. Ice flies and finesse plastics should be a part of every open water panfish angler's arsenal, just as they are for ice fishing.

I've even heard of jigging raps and jigging shads being incorporated into the open water scene.

Hop, skip, and a jump!

[lars0926]

Guess I'll have to build some floatation devices for my tip-ups.