02-21-2021, 07:34 PM
(02-21-2021, 05:53 PM)chrisg602 Wrote: Took an afternoon at mantua with my dad yesterday. The edges were fine and the ice was great wherever we went on the lake. We went all around and finally got a few decent rainbows in the middle of the lake that were cruising at 6-8 feet. Neither of us had iced mantua before so we didn’t really know what to expect. I figured someone here would be able to offer some knowledge about this: wherever we went there would be fish on the bottom we could see on the finder. We assumed perch so we used some ratfinkee’s, tungsten jigs, perch talkers, jigging spoons, and did our normal perch jigging strategy and couldn’t get anything off the bottom. They would rise up to look at our bait and stay on it for a while but we only got a couple small bites throughout 5 hours but didn’t land anything (we have some strike indicators on our rods so we can see the light bites). Can anyone offer some insight on what fish those could’ve been and what we can do to get catch them and get revenge for them toying with us all day? Thanks!My guess is that your bottom huggers might have been bluegills. They can be a bit picky...preferring juicy waxworms or mealworms to most standard perch-catching fare...like eyeballs. But perch can be picky too. Unless you manage to drag one up for a visual it is guesswork.
Most who target bluegills go for small jigs and small baits...not fished aggressively as for perch.