# How to become a better Ice Angler



## allwayzfishin (Apr 30, 2008)

Trust your electronics. If you’re not marking fish after a period of time, keep ‘er movin.’ Perhaps the most useful function of these tools is to tell you where fish aren’t.

If you are marking fish but aren’t hooking them, first change up your cadence. Instead of full-wrist jigging, just bounce the rod tip. If that doesn’t work, try holding the lure still if it seems a fish is staring it down. No go? Try lifting your rod tip ever so slowly, waiting to feel pressure. It’s amazing how lightly fish like walleye and crappie can bite in cold water.

Sometimes you need to go in the opposite direction. If the finesse wiggle isn’t doing it, maybe get a little more erratic. Lake trout are famous for not biting until they see the lure rip away toward the surface, as if their prey is trying to escape. Burbot can be triggered by banging a lure on the bottom, stirring up the substrate. For walleye, try jigging higher in the water column so hunting fish can see it from further away.

Here’s one I’m trying to remind myself of often: change your damn lure. Knots aren’t fun when it’s 15 degrees, but the point of fishing is to catch fish. Many of us will haul hundreds of lures in the sled, only to try one or two. The three factors to experiment with are size, profile, and color. Make changes to deliberately narrow down the field. Not marking fish? Try something that puts off big vibration or has a rattle to draw them in. Getting looks but no commitment? Size down or change color. You’ll know it when you hit the right combo.

On the other side of the coin, observe other anglers around you. Simply swapping out for the same lure your buddy is whacking them with might not make a difference. Rather, watch his or her rod tip. How fast and wide are they jigging? How far off the bottom? Every scrap of data you can gather will put you that much closer to a fish on the line.

Do Your Research
For most places you might want to fish, there’s likely been a frank and honest forum conversation about it recently. Reports are easy to come by, from local Facebook groups and tackle shops to forums like OGF and Iceshanty.com. You might be able to even ask questions to the most experienced hardwater anglers in that particular neck of the woods. It’s almost like ice fishing has historically been so under-utilized—and the cold so daunting—that the diehards are willing to accept newcomers with open arms.

Clearly that isn’t universal—fishermen being fishermen—but still you’d be a fool not to Google your destination plus “ice report” before going out. At the very least you’ll find out if it’s safe to walk out on the lake. At best, you might wind up with GPS coordinates to the honey hole. Which leads us to…

Use Maps
Arbitrarily drilling a hole somewhere then plopping down to jig it might be the single best way to come home empty-bucketed. The best ice anglers I know always use bathymetric maps (read: topography underwater) to pinpoint their hole-drilling locations. Sometimes that’s the sunken river channel bend where the perch hole up. Other times it’s the shallow shoal where walleye come up to hunt. Just like with deer hunting, you want to make your stand on natural funnels and other high-likelihood locations where more fish may be traveling.

In advance of our last big ice adventure, my friends and I pored over the subsurface terrain of our destination looking for saddles, structure, channels, deep holes, steep drop-offs, and anything else that might help us find the needle in the haystack. Armed with this knowledge and plan of attack, we went out there knowing exactly where we wanted to place our tip-up traplines. When one of those clumps started to produce, we holed up there and caught fish all weekend long.

There are several smartphone apps that allow you to view your current location relative to the underwater landscape, much like onXmaps provides for terra firma. These programs vary widely in quality, reliability, and price. I’ve tried most of them at this point, and my favorite so far is the FishSmart App from Humminbird. It’s pricey to download every individual lake for $20 to $30, but you can also put that data on a micro-SD card and into a GPS-enabled sonar unit like the Ice Helix 5 Chirp GPS I’m running.

Persistence, not Patience
Complacency is the enemy of productivity. Jigging the same hole with the same lure that hasn’t been touched in hours is a waste of precious time on the frozen water. There are stretches when you do need to just hunker down in the hut and wait for the bite to turn on or the blizzard to turn off, but you should do it for a good reason—not just because you’re bored or buzzed.

It’s really easy to get out on the ice, unload sleds, start fishing, and end up parked right there for the whole day. It takes a lot more enthusiasm and force of will to strike out across trackless ice in search of greener pastures and grabbier fish. But that is exactly the habit of highly successful ice anglers: an unwillingness to accept poor results and an overwhelming desire to succeed.
And remember, always use your spud bar on early ice. Don't crowd your neighbor. Be courteous and please take what trash you bring in. Don't leave it on the lake.


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## surfnturf (Jan 28, 2014)

Back in the early 80’s I bought 6 wind jigger tipups. They have become prospecting tools that I have different types of lures on each one. I use the to both locate and find color preferences for that outing 
Drill holes and setup on most productive areas


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## allwayzfishin (Apr 30, 2008)

I'd love to find some of those tip ups. Got any pics to share?


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## Saugeyefisher (Jul 19, 2010)

Great info always


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## HeaVyMeTaLFiSHinGFiEnD (Oct 2, 2010)

Some advice thats helped me the most the past couple years is to utilize fishing apps on ur phone. I have navionics pro app and it allows me to mark waypoints and areas of interest right in the palm of my hand. The most important feature on navionics though is the depth shading option. It allows me to highlight the depth range i like to fish (10-15 fow) and I can use the app to take me right to the areas I want to fish and put me right on the depth range I want. This is so extremely helpful when trying to eliminate water.


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## surfnturf (Jan 28, 2014)

When I get home from work will post pictures


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## Pooch (Jun 16, 2014)

Not wind jiggers but an easy evening project.


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## surfnturf (Jan 28, 2014)




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## surfnturf (Jan 28, 2014)




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## Bass knuckles (Sep 23, 2014)

Sometimes if it’s slow, I’ll rip blade baits and a lot of times fish will come in and won’t hit so I’ll drop little baits down and they will whack it, never know what they want, I’ve even had eyes and 13” crappi come in to view the vibe noise but when they see that live bait come floating down they can’t resist


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## RMK (Feb 21, 2017)

thanks for starting this!


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## 1MoreKast (Mar 15, 2008)

Great stuff man! 

This is my favorite:


allwayzfishin said:


> Here’s one I’m trying to remind myself of often: change your damn lure.


 Man I'm so guilty of this. It's hard to let go of confidence baits but this is so extremely true. It's rather funny how adamant we can be about bringing so much tackle only to use a handful of options.


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## allwayzfishin (Apr 30, 2008)

1MoreKast said:


> Great stuff man!
> 
> This is my favorite:
> 
> Man I'm so guilty of this. It's hard to let go of confidence baits but this is so extremely true. It's rather funny how adamant we can be about bringing so much tackle only to use a handful of options.


I know right...I probably have 500 lures in my pack. Only to use maybe 4-5 different options when I'm out. Lol. Even when I have a snap on, I fail to switch it up.


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## walleyeRod (Jan 24, 2011)

Im Guilty...every year i have certain baits for certain lakes and i still buy lures for ice fishing . Im like a fat kid and chocolate cake Mmmmmm got to have it!!!!


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## waterbite (Sep 26, 2009)

Great advice Adam. To add to your helpful post, one thing that's helped me to NOT use one lure too long is running through a set series of jigging patterns with each lure I use, (X# slow, X# snaps, X# lifts ect.), then switch out. I get to wash most of my tackle this way. Once you have a fish interested, the REAL game starts trying to get them to hit. Once again, vary your presentation until you entice a hit. For me, Ice fishing by far is the most challenging way to catch "Eyes", that's why I love it so much.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk


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## Evinrude58 (Apr 13, 2011)

Biggest thing I can think of is to get out as often and as long as possible. Reading about something can give you knowledge but you need to get out and just do it.


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## Lovin (Dec 6, 2020)

Allwaysfishin great post


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## birdcrazy (Jan 15, 2014)

How do you guys stop the wind knots on spinning reels? An ice jig and waxy made a mess in a short time today.
Thanks


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## allwayzfishin (Apr 30, 2008)

birdcrazy said:


> How do you guys stop the wind knots on spinning reels? An ice jig and waxy made a mess in a short time today.
> Thanks


Use 4lb main line ...attach a micro swivel and then a 18" piece of 2-4lb florocarbon. That should help you avoid most tangles from line twist.


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## fishwithsons (Oct 17, 2014)

HeaVyMeTaLFiSHinGFiEnD said:


> Some advice thats helped me the most the past couple years is to utilize fishing apps on ur phone. I have navionics pro app and it allows me to mark waypoints and areas of interest right in the palm of my hand. The most important feature on navionics though is the depth shading option. It allows me to highlight the depth range i like to fish (10-15 fow) and I can use the app to take me right to the areas I want to fish and put me right on the depth range I want. This is so extremely helpful when trying to eliminate water.


Navionics is awesome. I can’t say enough about how much it helps especially to discover new spots to fish.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## waterbite (Sep 26, 2009)

birdcrazy said:


> How do you guys stop the wind knots on spinning reels? An ice jig and waxy made a mess in a short time today.
> Thanks


another possibility is that your spool is over filled


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