Thread: A couple new ice baits

Nice stuff for sure!

Nice pours

Nice stuff thanks for sharing

Now those are ice baits.... nice job. Love that glow picture....uv under black light?

Great job.

very nice

As I mentioned earlier, these are nice looking baits for ice fishing. The tails and "legs" are thread thin at the end and that's what will set them apart from other baits. The beauty of the bait with the six legs is that they can be plucked off the bait to make a more compact, less "busy" bait if the fish are finicky or don't want that large of an offering. Thin is the reality of a great ice bait though.

I have a different approach to crappies under ice. I believe that they have two distinct modes that they use to feed. One is passive and is where baits like these wispy ended baits will shine. A passive crappie bite is one where some finesse may be needed to tease the hit into coming. The passive bite can be found anywhere thru the water column. The other bite is one in true hunting mode.

The hunting bite I see is depth specific but never at the bottom. The fish will come into the flasher cone and be gone in a second or two, even less when closer to the surface. These fish do not want petite or tiny. They want food. In this case my best bait has been the 1.75" Twitchy Minnow or a 1.75" paddletail. In the deep past the paddletail was a Culprit bait, but last year it was a 1.5" Do-It Thump-It grub. When held in a bucket of water to be kept fresh, crappies in this mode may puke out 10 to 20 3/4" sunfish fry that may even be kicking yet, which proves my theory that the crappies want MEAT in this mode. The hits are another indication that these fish are hunting hard.

The passive bite is the longer of the two bite in any given day-long period and is often the most significant bite in terms of length involving consecutive days when weather comes into play. The hunting bite might happen once or twice in a 24 hour period and last for only an hour or so, but can last for four or five hours. Regardless, you have to be ready to offer what the fish want. The baits shown in this thread fill a big portion of that need. The wedge I can see suckering those passive fish while the Kraken has the bulk to serve the hunting bite. I don't have either bait in hand but the Kraken may still be small enough to work well in the passive bite too. They both look like killer baits with the super thin and hair-like legs and tails.

These baits just simply impress me. Great job guys.

Thanks for the compliments guys. These are some super limber baits. They do catch fish. Ice baits are very different from open water baits. You need light thin plastics to give the action that you can not get because you are just fishing vertically. Finesse baits like these do well to get lethargic fish to follow and then commit. I like to rig these on a 1/32 tapered jig head with #10 hook. Like this jig. One of my best colors for gills and crappie thru the ice.