Hello everyone.
I've written another article for the "On the Hardwater" series of my blog. It's about how to approach a small lake to target panfish. It's titled, "On the Hardwater - Attacking a Small Lake for Panfish"
Why people ice fish means many things to many people. Some like the outdoors experience, just being out there, opting to not sit on the couch watching outdoors shows on the television. Others like the social aspect of ice fishing, even bringing cooking devices out on the ice to have a big party while catching a few fish. It's all good! But my goal is to catch as many fish jigging as I can...that's how I have fun on the ice. Smaller lakes often give you that opportunity. I like to improve my chances by hitting the hardwater on the smaller lakes. So, how do I approach my goal?
Small lakes offer an easy advantage to finding active panfish because you can cover a ton of ice in a single day. During mid winter, I like to start deep near dams or creek channels, then work towards more shallow types of structure, or cover like weed beds or tree blowdowns.
I like solving the puzzle, not only finding where the fish are, but where I can find the ones that are willing to bite. Sometimes it takes a little work, and at other times it could be a lot of work. Rarely, you might cut only one hole! But the most fun is catching them, one after another. It takes some knowledge, either learned via experience or from various media, such as videos, magazines, books, television shows, fishing forums and even from other ice anglers. And a little luck doesn't hurt.
The first step is to pick a lake that has a good panfish population. When I'm talking about a small lake, I'm thinking about a two hundred or so acres or less. The vast majority of the lakes in my region are man made, featuring a dam, flooded creek channels, points, islands, and other structure.
An advantage of finding a gem of a small lake is that you can cover most of if not then entire lake to find fish. You can still make that major change if the bite is off by fishing a totally different area on your lake or by having another nearby small lake as a back up plan. Sometimes, that major change will put you on active fish...
You can check out the rest of the article here:
On the Hardwater - Attacking a Small Lake for PanfishHope you all like it!
