Tips on jigs, bait and locations?

[Jig-fisher]

I'll pipe in.  I love my flasher for ice fishing.  I like that I don't have to pack a separate battery to run my unit.  I plug it in at home and it will run all day without having to recharge. I like that I can tell if the fish is right under me or is not near my bait by the color of the mark.  

I ran my boat finder for years on the ice and it worked OK.  I purchased an ice-ducer to narrow the cone,  which also helped with the hastle to switch it back to the boat.  I had some issues with it freezing up on me, which today finders probably wouldn't have. Being able to see a bit of history if you step away from the unit is the ONLY thing I miss about it.  And even if that happens, you more than likely aren't going to get a shot at that fish anyway because it will be gone.  I have a Vexilar FL-18 and love it.  I will never go back.

[N.E.T.O.]

Graph all the way. I have a Lowrance M68c that has both the graph as well as a Flasher mode. Basically, the Flasher shows what is on the far right of the graph, and it's just as accurate, etc...but it only shows live, right now. Look away for one second and you may have missed something. The graph shows everything the flasher does and also shows the history. You can see that a fish came in, looked, and swam away...or is still there.
Lots of folks that I fish with use the flasher, and it works well for them. I prefer the graph.

If you REALLY want to know what's going on down there...get a camera! This was yesterday. I caught both fish. You can see exactly how fish respond to your movements and actions. You can also see how LITTLE your rod actually moves sometimes when a fish has your lure in it's mouth!

[SkunkedAgain]

Wow really strange the whirling guys haven't piped up, we know they love their flashers...  I've never been able to get good with the traditional flasher, I have a Marcum LX and I set it up with both a showdown trype flasher and then the graph, it gives you the best of both worlds, but without the graph it would only be part of the picture... I love the history to see how the fish has acted to your different attempts to entice it...  Some fish you can work on or ever and they'll only chase you up and down, others loose interest and leave, and then there are the fish like my last one that came in at 15' and seen my lure at 28' and dove straight down and smacked it...  I don't see that very often at all when they move down to hit, but it was sure fun... Later Jeff

I am with you Jeff, I love the graph vs. blips on a flasher for the chance to see what happened when I looked away, but those flasher boys catch a lot a fish, so you won't hear me talking smack about their choice of toys. Oh and about catching up at Hyrum, doubt it will happen as bad as we would love to fish with ya. Without sharing the gory details it has been a medical tornado  this winter at the C&CBP house.  I am just hopeful that we will have things tracking better for spring.

Hey Lance, sorry to hear about the tornado, darn it, but we'll find a time to do it sometime... Will be looking forward to it...  I also agree with you on not arguing with the flasher crew, they do do very well no doubts...  I also have to qualify that the graph is only as good as the time delay... I used to use my boat model Lowrance and it said real time, but it was actually just a tad slow, so I was always late with what I needed to try, plus the transducer pattern was fan rather than cone shaped so it let fish sneak up on you a lot more than an ice ducer will...  If you don't have the real time then the flasher will beat you everytime, but with the newer models with the real time display, then I think it becomes a preference deal... ford, chevy or dodge thing... Just my take on the units... Later Jeff

[Miles Fitzrobert]

A success story.. Took my wife and kiddo to Newton yesterday, followed some tips (and literally tracks) from a poster who'd been there the day before. This time, we were armed (with knowledge and gear) and ready. I bought some ratfinkee glow jigs, we had nightcrawlers and wax worms and the expectation we'd probably have to move around a bit. While we hadn't picked up any store-bought spring bobbers, a couple of ball point pens, painters tape and pliers managed to produce a couple of rough ones.

First stop, my wife caught 3 perch, I didn't get a bite. When it slowed for her, I suggested we move a bit, so we drilled until we found some activity on the fish finder and slid over. The next several hours were busy and by the end of it we had 36 fish on the ice. I would have had more, but my wife literally took the worm off my hook and told me it was time to go.

Thanks all for the tips!

[MWScott72]

Good deal! I bet the cleaning wasn't quite so fun, but glad you guys were successful. Out of curiosity, what depth water and time of day were you fishing?

[Miles Fitzrobert]

Good deal! I bet the cleaning wasn't quite so fun, but glad you guys were successful.  Out of curiosity, what depth water and time of day were you fishing?

Heh.. I luck out, my wife likes to clean them, to improve her fish cleaning skills.

We were out there from around 11 or so until about 4-5. The first 3 were caught between 10-15 feet, the rest were all around 30-35 feet.

[taggmon54]

I don’t have a lot of experience with finders so you may be right on.  I’ll be interested to see what comments pop up.  I like how flashers are real time and target separation is down to the inch. I can see if my jigging puts off the fish, make them follow it up higher in the column... The number of flashers on the ice vs finders has to be 10 to 1 but maybe the flasher salesman is just better than the finder salesman? Great question.

I also hope others comment here as well, as far as real time and target separation you do have all of that on a traditional graph, I'm watching my jig in real time going up and down and watching individual fish reaction to it. I may be wrong but, I kind of think guys who use flashers do because they have always used flashers.

I use a Garmin 5. The flasher mode for pan fishing and the traditional mode with A-scope turned on for Kokanee and Lake trout fishing. I do not see a delay in my jigging. Also i like having the gps the finder has for waypoints.

[Mildog]

My two cents worth on the Sonar issue. To each his own. Either one is a great help to locate structure, the appropriate depth, and of course fish. They can also help determine how the fish are are responding to your presentation. It often comes down to cost and user ability to interpret what is going on and the quality of the unit being used. A flasher vs a graph are just different way of displaying this information. On many quality Graphs they will have an ICE Fishing setting"  The ice mode has a bar on the right hand side that is a live action readout in a vertical format instead of a circle like a flasher, with the added advantage of the history as it scrolls to the left, so you can see what happened if you were not watching every second. The other big advantage is my Graph has a GPS with ability to add lake map chips so I can locate spots that I have marked from soft water fishing and locate structure depth etc., before ever drilling a hole. The cost for the unit when new, it is an Elite 5 Lowrance was about 600 Bucks, I did not pay that much. I had an earlier similar Eagle unit minus the GPS sitting in the Garage that I had converted with an ammo can, a small 12Volt battery (actually my 12 volt ATV battery that I keep in garage in the winter anyway since I usually park them for the winter) and a short length of aluminum strip that I clamp to the side of the box to hold the transducer in position in the ice hole. It all fits in the ammo can, the battery lasts forever, It has worked out great for me. I realized that the transducer on the old unit was compatible with my upgraded unit, so I unhook it from the mount in the boat and pop it into the ammo can plug it into power transducer connection and now have the set up with GPS.  I can now use the same unit on soft water and or ice and get year round use out of it. So the set up I have can actually be more than a flasher but I like have GPS built in and not have to use separate GPS or phone app. And, I also don't have to have a unit for ice fishing and one for Soft water,
Just a tip but looking online you can buy some of these graphs used online for less than a flasher and the plastic ammo can and battery options are not that expensive. Try to find one that has an ICE setting, you can use graphs for ice fishing without it but it is a nice option to give you "flasher" and traditional graph display. The picture attached is of my old Eagle unit, I now use the Elite 5 in the same set up. This picture is with the unit in simulator mode, you can see the "ICE Flasher" side bar on the right hand side of the screen.
Tight lines

Mildog out

[Springbuck1]

I'm sure I'm going to repeat as lot of things, but I have a pretty short list of things that got me from clueless to generally successful when started icefishing about 15 years ago.

As an aside, I totally love the dock demon-type rods, and buy the $10.00 with the spin-casting reels for kids, all the time.

One, get on YOUTUBE and watch a bunch of underwater videos. That's how I learned how fish act, and what lures look like underwater. (hint; most jigging just looks silly, the lure just going boing, boing, boing, like nothin in nature does.) Being limited to vertical presentation is unique. It will help you make sense of what jigging different lures should look like, how fish bite, how truly light winter bites can be (it was a revelation to me), and how fish relate to your offering at different depths (sometimes you have to be TOUCHING the bottom, sometimes a foot off, sometimes they chase things down or up....), what spooks em, etc.

Second, you absolutely MUST be able detect strikes. I can't catch anything but trout without a tiny slip bobber, spring bobber, or noodle-tip rod. For panfish, a slip bobber needs to be the size of a marble. 6 lb test is WAY too heavy. Low-memory, low stretch, sensitive line helps. I say this without criticism, but places like PV should be a slam-dunk for small-mediocre perch almost anywhere you fish. That makes me think it's more likely you aren't seeing bites than that you aren't getting them. My first GOOD "spring bobber" was a small colored zip-tie taped to the end of my pole. Sometimes a bite = your line perfectly straight instead of slightly bowed. Often the tug you see/feel is them spitting it out.

Sometimes fish are really on the feed and bite everything I put down a hole, so I use larger lures with lots of action. More likely, for panfish anyway, I NEED quality 2- 4lb test and tiny lures. I was fishing with a buddy at Mantua once. He was using a 1/64 regular jig with a little tiny Maniac plastic. To him, that was a very small jig, but he got nothing until I gave him a size 16 hook Ratfinkee. Try all kinds of things, and DOWN size when needed.

MOVE! You absolutely need to find the right hole. If nothing bites in a few minutes, move. I'll drill a dozen holes and catch 3/4 of my fish through one good spot. I try to vary depths and topography while searching.

Sonar matters for knowing you aren't over a dry hole and finding suspended fish. I finally got a hand-held one that wasn't a complete cheapo, and I am learning, but my last outing 3 weeks ago, I would have caught 1/5th the fish I did, if I hadn't been able to drop my bait right above their noses.

Always take a variety of baits; I always have waxies, garden worms, mealworms, and perch bits/eyes with me. Also, before you get a lot of lures, get a variety of lures and ice jigs. I have hundreds of jigs in my box, but consistently use just a few, probably becasue I use them a lot, and I know HOW to use them. Some pretty expensive stuff (Hali jigs, swedish pimples, is definitely worth having ONE of. Also, small wiggly plastics are a good investment that I have to bite my and swallow my pride to pay what they want for em.

Gear is a LOT cheaper on Ebay/Amazon.

Last, having a mentor helps. I learned it all on my own..............oh, wait,.... except for a lot of people here on this site who taught me a little at a time, sometimes just one detail here or there about timing, etc. I had been fishing for perch a full crank from the bottom, thinking that WAS "on the bottom", when USUALLY literally almost touching the bottom is what you want.