I'm living in a new area about one hour away from where I used to fish over the years, I feel like I'm starting over again finding new productive, quiet and accessible waters. I have a natural aversion to popular, easy to get to places and with the snow cover this year my more remove lakes I'm not hitting yet. Perhaps these well known lakes are productive but my external locus of control gives me a bad attitude about them and aesthetics are a big factor for me.
In any event I hit a somewhat quiet 100 acre lake that about 10 miles from the nearest town but it has a modest share of cabins and homes, the lake has been noted for having a decent population of crappie and after about my 6th outing to this lake it's finally starting to pay off, granted it's about a 30 minute drive from home.
First ugly lake hammer handle on a jig in about 9 fow. Maybe it's a productive lake but I didn't care for the views although it's close to home.
All these crappie were caught on 4mm tungsten jigs tipped with waxies and sometimes a piece of plastic as well, I wanted a larger presentation once the crappie started hitting, I almost always fish smaller lures for pannies. On a side note it's liberating not to drag tip-ups and a minnow bucket on the ice on the 2nd half of the day. All crappie (5) were caught from 15:00 to 16:30 in 10 fow and within 50' feet of each other on a grass flat. Important thing to note, always use some type of spring bobber when pannie ice fishing and LOOK for the bend in the spring bobber to disappear as some of the crappie were biting from below and moved higher up and caused the string bobber to straighten out. If I didn't have some type of spring bobber I'm sure I would have missed half the bites, they were subtle today.
I plan on hitting this lake tomorrow after work and hope to pop holes by 15:45, we'll see how that goes. Good news is folks are able to drive there trucks on the ice on some of the inland lakes.
In any event I hit a somewhat quiet 100 acre lake that about 10 miles from the nearest town but it has a modest share of cabins and homes, the lake has been noted for having a decent population of crappie and after about my 6th outing to this lake it's finally starting to pay off, granted it's about a 30 minute drive from home.
First ugly lake hammer handle on a jig in about 9 fow. Maybe it's a productive lake but I didn't care for the views although it's close to home.
All these crappie were caught on 4mm tungsten jigs tipped with waxies and sometimes a piece of plastic as well, I wanted a larger presentation once the crappie started hitting, I almost always fish smaller lures for pannies. On a side note it's liberating not to drag tip-ups and a minnow bucket on the ice on the 2nd half of the day. All crappie (5) were caught from 15:00 to 16:30 in 10 fow and within 50' feet of each other on a grass flat. Important thing to note, always use some type of spring bobber when pannie ice fishing and LOOK for the bend in the spring bobber to disappear as some of the crappie were biting from below and moved higher up and caused the string bobber to straighten out. If I didn't have some type of spring bobber I'm sure I would have missed half the bites, they were subtle today.
I plan on hitting this lake tomorrow after work and hope to pop holes by 15:45, we'll see how that goes. Good news is folks are able to drive there trucks on the ice on some of the inland lakes.