Keep moving

Taking advantage of the local ice while we can, makes for fishing new waters and new adventures. Always enjoy new challenges, the research that goes into finding the lakes that have the species that we want to target, makes the catching that much more rewarding.

First lake has a lot of deep water and wanted to probe those depths looking for the crappie that are there. Spent a couple of hours searching through deep water, near shore locations and shallower flats.

Marked very few, very few fish and only hung around for a couple of hours before vacating this lake in search of a redeeming body of water. Next town over there is another lake that I frequent a lot in the summer, never in the winter, that I had caught some decent crappie while bass fishing last summer.

There is a ridge that runs through the first part of the lake and tops out at 5 feet on top. The east side drops off into 10-11 feet of water and the west side drops into 30 feet. Looking before drilling and you can see where others tried on top of the ridge for bass so that was a good reference as to drilling the first hole.

Opted for the east side of the ridge and started in 9 feet and had fish there right away. Using the Clam Drop Kick jig and a light pink colored plastic, there were several 10-inch crappies coming in.

There was a large mark on the Vexilar flasher and didn’t take long and a decent pickerel was caught. That one fish ruined that hole for quite some time as the crappie had vacated that area and the search to finding them was on.

Struggled for quite a while and picking off one here and one there but not able to find that school that I was on. As the sun was setting behind the trees, the crappie came alive and the fishing was nonstop until dark.

That evening bite really saved the afternoon and would have liked to stay after dark and see if the better fish would move in. Goes to show you that if you are striking out on one lake, pack up and head off to another lake and this option could save your day on the ice.