Thread: the struggle is real.

bays on the north side of the body of water. bays with creek inlets. shallow bays near deep water. bays with wind blowing into them. bay areas with cover. fish your lure of choice as slow as you can and use scent. run and gun and watch the water temps. they are very spooky so be very stealthy. afternoons on sunny days can rev up the bite substantially! from noon on till almost dusk usually being the best for me.

Originally Posted by river scum

bays on the north side of the body of water. bays with creek inlets. shallow bays near deep water. bays with wind blowing into them. bay areas with cover. fish your lure of choice as slow as you can and use scent. run and gun and watch the water temps. they are very spooky so be very stealthy. afternoons on sunny days can rev up the bite substantially! from noon on till almost dusk usually being the best for me.

Yeah, sleep in this time of year.

Went to eagle creek Saturday instead of geist. I found them right off a point where it dropped off to 35ft. They were all 32 ft to 25ft down. I tried casting into them and vertical jigging right over them. I worked the school for probably an hour before moving bc I didn't get one bite. I tried everything I had from little ice fishing presentations all the way up to a 3 inch presentation. Not sure why I couldn't get them to bite. But anyways I moved to several different areas and same thing. Couldn't get them to bite. Any suggestions bc I'm stumped...

I fished some muddier than usual lakes Friday and Saturday and caught them a foot under a bobber with both jigs and minnows. Found some sunny banks with wood cover/docks and they were ready to bite.

35 feet deep is well beyond my capability in a kayak so I got lucky finding them shallow.

Thanks

I've found the bite is better with the smaller jigs and jig heads here in Missouri after the ice is off. I use a jig setup with two 1/64 oz jigs on top of one 1/32 oz. Space jigs about 8" between each other. All my jigs are 1 1/2" or smaller till the water warms into the 40's then got to larger jig sizes. The bite here is so light you have to watch the end of your pole for a little dip. No thumps when water is this cold. Use electronics to find shad balls and fish around outer edges. I won't dip a jig unless I see something on screen. Slow is the way to go. I cast out and let line drift to vertical which covers quite a depth range and can tell about how deep they are from that. It is a never ending learning process but you can catch tons of fish this time of year as they are schooled tighter.

Yeah I tried fishing shallow where the Sun was shineing. I marked them in between 6 and 8 foot in 12 foot of water. Tried casting into them with the slowest retrieval and small jigs. Fished them with a bobber and jig set about 5 foot down and still nothing. Couldn't get a bite and don't understand why

Even tried tipping everything with crappie nibbles

went to ef sunday lake is chocolate milk pullin 2 foot a day and we caught well over a 100 in 2 fow fishin 1 foot deep.light bite no jiggin bobber out of sight or flatening it lots of tater chips and lots of keepers.tried area in mornimg and caught some came back around 4 and it was every cast and the wind was blowing steady 25mph allday.we fished from one end to the other end tryin shallow and swimming jigs deeper with not much luck.friends went today and said it was unreal and lots of big fish.fish r gonna be on fire by this weekend!!!