Finicky land locked smelt tips

[keithm87]

We have been smelt fishing for years on small lakes in VT and never have much of an issue catching them when they are there, but this year we are marking them, and can visibly see them down the hole, but the classic hali, small tungsten, maggot combo isn’t getting bit. Even using smelt throat (my all time favorite smelt bait) isn’t working. We watch them swim by the hook. In 3 hrs we caught 20 today. A lot of short bites when we dropped below the green light, but at times we would watch hundreds swimming and not get bites.

I’m at a total loss, and asking for the advice of the internet, what will make these buggers bite?

[slipperybob]

Daytime, nighttime, moon cycles,...sometimes one cannot catch much of anything.

When I fish for them smelts, sometimes they will bite from about 3-5' below me to as deep at about 100' below me.  When they are schooled very tight, they rarely bite.  So when I'm marking like a big school that's packed and showing solid on my flasher for like a 10-40' band of smelt, I almost never get them to bite.  When I can see individual smelts marks on my flasher, I do so much better.  If the one at 20' mark isn't biting, I drop down to the one at 30', if not then the one at 40', etc.,..because one of them will more than likely bite.

Smelt biting and hooking up, is kind of two different things.  To improve my hook up ratio.  I do use a braid line between my weight and hook.  About half the smelt I hook up with, are not hooked well.  They fall off as soon as I get them out of the ice hole.  So basically it's like the hook bend is just hooked onto their teeth and I reel in fast so they can't spit it out.