What's working now Ice 07-08!!!

[Kyle Sandberg]

Wow. Thats a really nice crappie. If only I could get into some of them that size around here.

[Bob/Mn]

I have been having good luck on the panfish by using lures that have been dressed up a bit.

The vertical spoons work well with a bit of yarn on the treble hook.

Add a bit of powerbait or yum and you have a real winner.

[Matt Johnson]

Good stuff Bob! Great tip on dressing up your jigs. Those Shad Darts work wonders on the pannies

[harvey lee]

Check out these Outdoor pro series jigs and read the post made by guys that have had great success with them.

http://www.fishingminnesota.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1218537#Post1218537

[Mcfin]

My experience with plastics is that it depends on the lake. Some lakes I fish, they work great. On one lake, the crappies dont't want anything else.On the lake I am currently fishing, if you don't have something live on your hook, you might just as well go home.

[Mcfin]

Bob/Mn Thanks for the tip on the yarn.I am going to try it.By the way, how do you get that dime on your hook?

[Matt Johnson]

Spent the morning out chasing pannies. Looking for monster gills but settled on crappies instead. Had a hard time finding any gills over 9-inches, and not too many numbers either. The crappies on the other hand decided to come out and play.

We targeted depths of 7-13 feet and marked a lot of fish and caught a lot of crappies in the 7-10 inch range. Out group did manage 7 fish over 12 inches with the biggest coming in at around 13 3/4 inches. Most of the fish came in on plastics (Ratsos and Power Minnows) but a few came on Marmooskas and larva. I caught all of my fish on either a Glow/Chart Power Minnow or a Pink head/blood red body Ratso.

Bottom content seemed to be mostly hard with a little bit of stick in some areas. Fish seemed to be cruising through and you could intercept a few before the school moved on. Just about drained an entire tank of auger gas today

The key today seemed to be the game of cat and mouse. If you had a fish on the flasher that wouldn't eat, all you needed to do was tease it a little and start to lift the jig away from it and the fish would almost always take the bait. Overall it was a fairly aggressive day.

Here's a pic of one of the crappies...

Tomorrow we plan on hitting a different lake in hopes of finding a few more larger gills.

Don't know why, but I have bull gills on the brain

[CALVINIST]

Nice fish Matt. I notice your Thorne stick. Can't wait to catch a few slabbies on mine!

[Burnham]

gulp artificial waxies (natural color) is what ive caught most of my fish on

[ole matty]

i had some good crappies fishin yesterday on silver swedish pimple tip with 2 waxies and la optic stealth and plastics.

[NWBuck]

My son and I did really well yesterday, but small was the key. Yellow or blue shrimpo tipped with a gulp waxie seemed to be the best pattern. He caught the biggest bluegill I've ever seen...one of those I stood over a long time before I cleaned it. Still think maybe we should've put it on the wall.

[Matt Johnson]

We hit the ice again yesterday morning and ended up switching gears completely. We started out targeting crappies over a decent size basin and managed to catch a few with two in the 11-inch range. However the crappies were not going. We must have worked over 75 holes in about an hour between 4 guys and could not find a consistent school, so we decided to move on to the gills...

We relocated over a shallow water flat with scattered weeds (depths were 4-7 feet). We hooked into a couple nice gills right off the bat but then the pike moved in and it was all over. We couldn't catch a gill without a pike cruising in on the next drop. So, we decided to rip-jig for some pike and we ended up landing close to a dozen pike on jigging rods Biggest was around 7 pounds and boy do they crush the bait in that shallow water! No need to use a flasher and when one hit you knew it!

We caught our crappies on size 8-4 Ratsos. A couple came on Power Minnows too. The gills all took the size 8 blood red Ratso. The pike... well let's say they took just about anything and everything

Sure was nice to feel the warm sun yesterday. Looks like today is going to stay warm until this afternoon. High winds but if you hunker down on the back side of an island or shoreline then you should be fine...

[slim1]

This weekend I faithfully tried the plastic baits and oh my, how have I caught fish before that. After listening to you and other preach on it I did it and will be doing it from now on. Timid crappies hit it and out fished brother in-law 3 to one. Thanks for all the info you give out also Bechtold too. You don't give away lakes which is cool, but you do show us what to use a lot of the time,I think if Corey could come and tie someones line for them he would , (if they where fishing panfish) Slim

[Matt Johnson]

Congrats on the plastic bite slim1! Sounds to me like you have yourself a new fishing catching technique

[ole]

Matt, you still catching hog panfish in the metro? Man I've had a tough time catching anything real big this year.

Good Lucck, ole

[Kyle Sandberg]

Matt, its a shame you weren't able to get some bigger fish out there. We were fishing lakes close to one another. We had a group of guys out fishing a main lake basin and managed to get on top of a school of fish. Pulled some nicer ones up as well. Between two guys, we pulled up 3-12, 1-12.5, 1-13, and one pig at 13.5. Small jigging spoons that rattled worked the best tipped with a minnow head. Silver and pink seemed to be the top producers.

[Matt Johnson]

K Dawg,

I saw your pics, I think we were on different ends of the Metro though I was on the Northeast end and I think you were out west... I fished were you did on Saturday and we managed seven over 12 inches, but the fishing was tough...

ole,

The Metro is still kicking out some decent fish, although you're starting to see a lot more fishing pressure on some of the lakes, so I'm taking longer trips to get on quality fish. You been hooking them lately?

[ole]

Matt, Earlier in the season I got into a few nice panfish. Lately it's been tough. Hit a lake that I thought was a sure thing . They were there but I couldn't get them to bite, I tried plastics, downsizing and even the Flutterbugs, no go!

Should do better in March. Thanks, ole

[walleyeking19]

i now know whats working... not what is tied to my line.

[Matt Johnson]

We targeted basin orientated fish this past weekend. A lot of fish out in the 17-22 foot mark. We tried shallow but it just wasn't going. Crappies, gills, and perch were all relating to the bottom 3 feet and were feeding heavily on bottom larva and bloodworm. Caught a lot of fish on blood red plastics again.

The particular spot we were fishing was just off a deep hole up on the mainlake basin in about 18 feet of water. There were a series of scattered humps out there and we had the area to ourself. Had to punch about 25 holes before we found the pod of fish, but once we did we didn't have to move for several hours. Those fish were untouched and have seen absolutely no fishing pressure this winter. The fish holes they saw were ours.

Here's a shot of one of the gills...

The wind howled a little bit so it was nice to find a spot where we could hunker down for a bit and flip the trap.

Ratsos worked well, as did Nuggies on a Marmooska. Another guy in our group was working them over with a size 2 Sweedish Pimple tipped with Gulp.

Key here is that we decided to venture away from the crowds and locate a different, more active pod of fish. I spent some time talking with the people fishing amongst the crowds and they were having a very hard time getting the fish on their flashers to commit. Simple moves away from the pressured fish can pay off at certain times. Moves as small as 100 yards can make the difference between five fish or fifty fish. So stay mobile and move until you find a pod of fish that are active, they are out there everyday, you just have to find them.

With the warm spell we're going to see in the next few days the fishing should be good. Looks like a few single digits are going to sneak in over the weekend, but it shouldn't play that big of a role...

[ole]

Another nice sunny. Well i decided to try a little night time fishing. Got set up around 4:30 away from the crowd but still in the general area where everyone else was fishing. Hit crappies steady from 6:00 till we decided to call it a night about 8:30. They were aggressive biters so lure choice didn't matter too much as long as it glowed. Didn't catch any monsters but kept enough for a meal. Matt is right when he said move away from the crowd, it made a big difference for us!

Good Luck, ole

[Kyle Sandberg]

I went out fishing tonight with Corey. Had a tuff time getting on fish prior to his arrival. New lake and all. Once we set up, drilled about 25 holes, dropped the units down and started fishing. Pulled up many small crappies. There were a few that went 9" mixed in but not many. Then it seemed like a switch was flipped. for 30 mins the bigger crappies were rolling through and we picked up 6 that were 11". Also got one sunny, about 8". They were caught on a red ratso and as it got dark a glow ratso.

[Corey Bechtold]

Wow, what a weekend! With the weather man predicting nice weather I thought I'd get out and do some fishing. I fished a couple different lakes on Saturday with success on both lakes with different presentations. The first lake I started fishing at 11:00 and fished till 3:00. It was a mixed bag of mainly Crappies and a couple Sunfish. Size wasn't great but a few Crappies measured 10". The fish were suspended under a monster pod of invertabrates and other aquatic fluff which made the fishing difficult with all that food for the fish. The key presentations were small horizontal jigs like Ratso's or 1/80th oz jigheads with Lindy Techni-Glo micro minnows. After a while I went a bit smaller with tiny Fiskas jigs tipped with a Lindy Tiny Spade tail. The fish weren't slammin the bait but would float in and sip the offering. Having the 24" Power Noodle helped with detecting the light bites.

Later I hit a different lake on the way home. I didn't have much daylight so I just popped a couple holes along a breakline and saw fish on my Flasher right away. I dropped down a bigger bait to try and get some nicer fish and it payed off. I caught quite a few fish on 1/32oz jigheads and Berkley Power Tubes. After the main flurry right at sundown I switched to a tiny hair jig that I had tied. It caught a few smaller fish. It was fun catching a few fish on some hand made jigs.

Sunday afternoon I also had an opprotunity to fish with a friend of mine on a new lake. We met up and hit the lake around 3:00. Right away I had a lot of lookers that I thought to be Bluegills. I stayed with my Power Tube and moved a few holes till I stumbled into some Crappies. They were very aggressive in the shallower water (11'). After a few fish on the Tube I switched to Power Minnows and they did a smack up job on some better fish. Nothing really huge but a few fish up to 12". The key color was Glow/Chart on a 1/32oz jighead that I had painted Chart/White. I also tried a Bobby Garland Slab Slayer in Electric Chicken and whacked a couple Crappies on that bait as well. With the falling temps on Sunday I was glad to have my Thorne Bros 32" Panfish Sweetheart. I didn't have to worry too much about ice forming on the guides, even with Fireline Crystal.

Despite the wind and blowing snow it was an interesting weekend on the Ice. I hope for warmer weather and maybe some bigger fish showing up in the shallows soon.

I'll try and get a few pics or the CPR'ed Crappies later.

Good fishing,

Corey Bechtold

[Craig Plummer]

Very nice report!

When working over the shallow water crappies do you target large flats near drop offs, points, the drop-offs themselves? I've just been targeting deeper basins but this there is some potential in the shallows, just not sure what I'm looking for

[Corey Bechtold]

Yep, larger flats with deeper water nearby. Shallow fish tend to be more aggressive than the deep basin fish.

Good luck,

Corey Bechtold