This time of year it is time to start getting into the mode for ice fishing and breaking out the ice fishing rod/reel combo and the Vexilar flasher to do some vertical jigging. The air temps were around 70, with this comes a fairly stiff breeze to deal with and the waters vacated of any sign of human life and this gives me the solitude of having the lake to myself.
With a couple of hours, panfish were the targets for this outing and searching for sunfish and crappies is always exciting at this lake. These fish are not the biggest compared to other waters, but being close to home, the numbers are definitely there. There is one deep hole in this lake that I fish mainly when fishing here and usually never fails in catching some fish.
Luckily the area that I wanted to fish was protected to a point from the shoreline trees and the wind wasn’t too tough to fish today. Once getting to the area I turn on the flasher and start paddling around and looking for fish on the screen. Doesn’t take long before they are located and lowering the anchor so that I can work this area without getting blown away.
Today’s bait choice was to be a pink/purple colored T.H.E. Jig with a couple of small split shot above it to get down deeper a little more quickly. Water depths were in the 18 foot range and the most active fish were suspended at around 15 feet. The suspending fish were much more active then the lookers that would come off of the bottom.
Didn’t take long and the first crappie came to the surface and so did many more after that. A few sunfish were caught as well but they were on the small side. The last couple of seasons have noticed that the crappies on this lake have been a small side with average sizes of 9 inches are the most common.
By watching the flasher this allows me to see how the fish are relating to my bait presentation and also lets me know when the fish were ready to bite. By fishing vertically just like we do in the winter months, this practice gets us ready for the ice season ahead. This was the first trip in the kayak this fall with many more to come and today there was 17 crappies, 2 sunfish and a perch caught.
This abnormal warm weather makes it very hard not to take advantage of wetting a line and hopefully there will be many more days like this as well. I am very ready for the ice season ahead and can’t wait to walk and fish on hard water once again.
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