Been an odd season for me too. Last outing put it all on a thumbnail:
One small pike before noon (we were on the ice @ 6:00), a couple of "drive by" flags that were clearly bumped off or pulled by a spooked minnow but nothing else. I was in wire, one guy and his kid had mostly fluoro and a couple wire and my son was 2 fluoro/1 wire fishing a mix of live and dead baits.
Finally @ 4:55 pm I get a flag on a Q/S rig with a couple dead shiners. Swing and a miss... (how'd that happen?) I re-bait and Kyle gets a fluoro flag. Miss. My freshly set rig goes up again, 30"
. Kyle misses another on wire. As he is re-baiting another of his goes up so he takes that. Miss. When he returns to the rig he was resetting he finds the wire leader broke off near the hook. He'd gotten his bait on and just threw it down the hole on a short line to get the other flag, just left the tippy lay next to the hole.
As the season progresses feeding windows get smaller, sometimes really small. We stayed till 6:30 with no further action. All day for about 20 minutes of excitement. And even then our total success was only 25% all day. Not very good.
Even earlier in the season we had issues with walleyes hitting, head shaking on the run and dropping bait. Setting hooks right away helped but all were barely hooked in the upper lip.
@musky-man: If your wire is 18 - 20# there's no benefit to doubling other than extra strength. 20# is plenty for most of the fish you'll catch and you can get the rest, just can't horse 'em. I've used as light as 12# but it's very fragile and really didn't get me bit more often. I know, it's very flexible as it comes off the spool and so thin it makes you wonder but it works.
Doc, Iceassin, I appreciate your adventurousness with wire as I also feel your frustration. I got pushed into a lot of different stuff this year not fishing where and how I wanted so I made the best of it. I did learn some stuff but didn't get on the spots I've had great success with in the past. One of the things I've learned fishing muskies, when things get tough don't experiment too much. Stay with the best spots and your highest confidence presentation for the conditions. Might only get one swing but at least I'm not skunked. Remember it's not about you, it's about the fish.
