Find the edges of the weed beds off of points back in bays etc. Structure can really be anything and at any given time they can change from one to the next.
If its stocked, fish the stocking area, you can go quite shallow, a couple feet of water...I like a little more but I know guys that will fish with 2-3
feet of water under the ice and do well.
A bare hook with real shrimp (not cocktail shrimp, they're much too soft imho!). Cut it into chunks. I've died them it worked but I wont say any better than raw shrimp. They will suck that cocktail shrimp off or it will just fall off. you could firm it up, with salt or some form of brine...regular shrimp is just easy.
Any small jigging spoon.
Jigs with soft tail bodies. figure they're looking for any of the larva stage of goodies that are waiting for spring to mature into adults, be them stones, damsels, dragons mayflys, and caddis. There's leeches around and even if they're not out and about in winter, any fish that sees one knows what it is and wont say no to it very often. (a good spring trout flie is nothing more than a piece of black/olive/white piece of zonker rabbit hair on a bare hook, it sinks slow and moves all over the place. Its rare they don't work). You can go meaty with the plastic body and jig head combo and I like pounding the bottom, stur up the muck, they usually come investigate if they're around. Be warned you can get them pretty stoked doing this and they can really hammer a bait instead of the normal soft take. Basically it mimics something happening. fish foreaging, up here char like digging for snails hence it works extremely well if char are your target/around, or something getting eatn, creating competition.
Flies above a jigging spoon, remove the hooks if you're in single hook water only its a great 'off' bite presentation. When they're there but wont hammer anything this will pull a few in. You'll have to figure the fly part out. I have a few that consistently work well summer/winter and do very well with this rig.
or go with the typical ice jig route, small and see what happens.
If you have electrics of some kind you can see how they're reacting to what you have and how you're presenting it.
Figure out what their main forage is. You don't have to be spot on, but when the fish are off, getting close to it could mean a few fish verses a doughnut.
depth is hard to say, but I usually like fishing near the weedbeads or up in bays. I let my electronics tell me where fish are at. if I don't find them move. Keep moving until you do. Once you find them stay and change gear until I get a reaction or a bite. Don't get stuck in a one or two hole deal...if there's nothing around go find them. First things is you gotta have fish to catch'm
