TTTC (too tough to catch) panfish

I fished today in the Finger Lakes south of Wabasha. The Solunar Tables indicated the hot bite was from 9:00 AM – 2:30 PM. WE WERE ON THE ICE & fishing by 9:30…….waiting for that five hour frenzy that would require us to do shoulder therapy from the constant strain! Joe, my old neighbor, had his Vexilar Camera, and I my flasher, so we were covering all angles. We tried every possible approach to panfishing that would entice a taxidermy mount off your wall. We talked to the other anglers, I even called Bruce to see if he could help us with some timely advice. When I told him we were doing that already, he said, ” I guess that’s why they call it fishing!” We saw crappies, sunfish, largemouth bass, & even several dogfish come in to examine the jig. The jig was jigged, sometimes it was just lifted or dropped, sometimes it was held motionless. The fish would come into view, and all but two or three just turned away. The other anglers that we talked with were doing the same thing. Of the 20+ fishermen on the ice! we only found 1 sunfish & a 6″ bass. And the real kicker is: for the last four days, people had been catching a bit of everything! Oh, well……… I guess we will just have to go again!

Much the same down here Ed. I attribute most of it to bright sunshine and little to no snow cover on the ice. Better luck next outing.

Same here too but found taking the rod out of my hand helped a lot. I could mark fish but they’d seem to just sniff the bait unless I put the rod down and walked away. It’s days like that it’s best for me to put out as many rods as possible – here it’s 3, all with different light colored jigs (yellow/orange mix). I dug back into my tray of jigs and pulled out those odd ones that worked years ago but haven’t used in awhile and use the lightest line I could get away with. Use the lightest, most sensitive rod you can, for me this past weekend was my old but trusty Frabill Panfish Popper. What worked for me was to use my flasher and lower my jig so it was ever so slightly above marked fish then I put the rod in a rod holder and walked away. Didn’t take long and the rod was bending, if not, I’d go back and look at the flasher. If the fish were still there sometimes slightly lifting the rod after sitting still for several minutes would trigger a bite. Even then it was usually necessary to hold the rod as still as possible and if there was the slightest tick or tiny bend in the spring if I lifted up I set the hook. Horizontal jigs with a waxie worked best, lighter lead jigs worked better than tungsten. I found the fish were actually biting but they didn’t move with it so bites were hard to detect. Lots of fish would only have the waxie so when I tried to pop them I’d get robbed a lot. Double hooking the waxies helps that problem a bit. In through the top of the waxie then back in from the bottom up so the hook ended up nearer the middle of the waxies. I think I did better than most yesterday and rarely caught a fish with the rod in my hand, most were on the dead sticks. Those would likely be better camera days than flasher days but I’m too stingy to buy a camera.

Hi Ed,

The Winona area has been very much hit or miss also. Finding, marking and moving fish has been relatively easy but getting them to trigger has been a challenge since just before Christmas. I just keep moving and changing baits hoping to find something that turns them from lookers to biters but it’s been a grind. I don’t seem to have any patience for sitting and waiting them out so after a few minutes I am usually moving on. I circle back to the holes with fish and try different baits and sometime downsizing or getting more aggressive can help.

Good luck out there.
Dave

Ed, Ed, Ed…..you have to learn to fish for fish that read the same solunar tables as you do and then those that agree with the reading material. Simple.

Same problem in my area last weekend as well. Not sure if it is the Pressure changing or what. For some reason it seems to happen around this time each year and last for 3-4 weeks. Last weekend what I found to pick off a few decent fish was to Downsize to the smallest lure possible. Tip with 1 fresh wax worm. Drop to a foot of so above the fish and jig rather aggressively. If the fish raise up to the bait hold it as still as possible for a 30 seconds or so. If nothing, more it Up another foot and Repeat. They will either inhale it or drop back down. All my bites can after holding the bait still for 30 seconds or so.

One other trick I used was to rip the jig away fast after leaving it sit still for minutes. It riles up the fish like shooting near a herd of deer and I think the hits I got after that were defensive strikes. My flasher would load up with fish after a rip, try it twice though in a row and it just spooks them away.

Moving was also a key. Not all the holes were good. Most of my fish yesterday came out of 3 different holes but I worked at least 20 holes throughout the day. Of course, I did knew I was on a bunch of nice gills. Nowhere were they aggressive – motion, even jigging aggressively was not the key this time though it does work other times. If the jig wasn’t right in their face they’d leave so rising up wasn’t the key either this time either or all weekend. I had to fix the jig within a sliver of the weeds but above them and within a sliver of the fish marked but also above them.

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i had the same thing this last weekend fish were only truely active for about 1 hour and it seemed to just shut off. so i decided to start crib hopping with my new camera. i would take 20 -30 min setting up everything perfectly then fish for about 5-10 min jigging very aggresivly at the smaller fish and until i entice the bigger ones than start to jig for that fish. once i would catch the 4-6 good fish in that crib i would move on. i swear on over 90% of the fish i cought you didnt see the rod or spring bobber move. sight fishing for gills and crapies was a blast when the bite was that light. ended up with about 20 gills over 8 inches

Ed, next time the bite gets tough, just go through your jig box and find the smallest jig of the bunch and tip it with the smallest plastic you got and vice versa when they are aggressive. Drill alot of holes and work them, weeding out the takers and nayers. I usually fish down in the backwaters by winona. Lately, Mn city has been producing but it can be frustrating getting them to commit…lol, so just keep at it and you’ll definitely bring them topside. I’m usually out every Saturday so nextime if you’re in the area look for the guy in the brown camo striker suit and red striker rod bag on his back and say hi.GOOD LUCK!

Thanks for the advice! I will definitely look for you when I am out. It is always nice to talk to people going through the same problems that I am having. Good luck!

I will try that next time out. Thanks.

We tried that dead sticking, too. Maybe next time!

Hey Ed. I was out on the finger lakes as well the last few days although I don’t know what one you were on it was the same for all of them. The bite was crazy on Saturday but Sunday and Monday was almost non-existent. We kept a total of 10 between 5 guys, not cause we hadn’t caught more but that is all we really wanted. There were however plenty of people keeping a lot more and those lakes were fished very hard this past week. I would say just give it some time to recover from all the pressure they received. But dead sticking did work well for us when we had decent sized Swedish pimples with crappie minnows for perch. As for pannies, we did smallest jigs we had with waxies. My advice would be just avoid that place for a bit until it has a chance to recover and then hit it before all the crowds get there which is much easier said than done.
Good luck

Ed

Was the depth ok on the finger lakes? I know some years they get pretty shallow.

I was with my son a week ago on pontoon slough. Very slow but a couple ok gills.

Ed Stern wrote:

We tried that dead sticking, too. Maybe next time!

You must not be doing it right! :

Seriously though maybe it’s because we did something different. I gave a guy that wasn’t catching fish my best hole and we put his dead stick there with a waxie and got nothing. I used 2# Stren Ice Hi-Vis gold on a 28″ glass noodle rod or UL rods with Frabill Panfish Popper springs on the tip in wire rod holders. I used mostly yellow/orange 1/32 VMC Pug Bug or something similar in lead and a waxie hooked once on tip from the top down then once close to half way back from the bottom up. I used my flasher to place the jig an inch above the gills I marked and I knew they were gills.

The other guy used a smaller vertical Hali jig with waxies hooked only through the tip on heavier fluorocarbon line with a tiny split shot maybe 6″ above the jig without a flasher.

We found about 7-9 fow. We were about fifty yards from the access road. We marked & saw plenty of fish………uninterested fish!