Conditions: Cloudy skies, upper 40's air temperatures and little to light winds
We are really getting to the end of the ice fishing season here in New England. The ice in Massachusetts is inaccessible as the shorelines have opened up and no access is attainable. So to keep the ice season going you have to drive to New Hampshire to find ice that is fishable. We made a drive to a southern New Hampshire reservoir and were surprised to only see two trucks at the landing. You could go anywhere you wanted on the ice and upon the thickness inspection, there was a good 16-18 inches of ice. As the morning wore on, pools of water were forming on top of the ice and made it a bit sloppy if you weren't paying attention. This reservoir was the first place that we started this year's ice season and we wanted to give it another try as it is a high producer of crappies. Once we were able to get all of our set lines done, and catching pickerel as we went along, it was time to start searching for crappies. There is a ditch that goes through the area we were fishing and staying inside of this ditch is where the crappies were located. If you ended up on either shallow side of this ditch, there weren't any fish that could be found. All of the fish that we were catching were inside of this ditch and the deepest part was 26 feet deep. It didn't take long and we were catching crappie after crappie but these fish were so small. We drilled holes all over the area staying in the ditch and no matter where you drilled, you were catching crappies but there just was no size. We were fishing the Northland Tackle Mooska Tungsten jigs tipped with a couple of EuroLarva for scent attractant. We would catch crappies and a few sunfish but then we would get into pods of golden shiners and some of them were quite large. You could tell on the Vexilar's when these shiner pods would come through as they would light up the whole screen. After drilling holes everywhere in the area that we were in, I started moving a bit further downstream and later in the day did hit a few much nicer crappies. Could only get a few of the nicer ones and by the time we left the other anglers had left long ago. This reservoir definitely has a population of crappie in it but there needs to be a bit of management to getting the size back to being respectable.
There is a lot of rain forecasted for the next couple of days across New England as not really sure as to what that is going to do for the remaining ice.
We are hoping to get out one more time this coming weekend and hopefully find a good crappie lake to cap off this awesome ice season. So until next time may your lines be tight and smiles on your face...FISH ON...
