Watching the crazy good crappie bites that James, Joel & Cal have experienced the past couple weeks has left me with a serious case of panfish envy so I couldn’t wait to get out on the ice this past weekend. Joined on my panfish mission by good friend Taylor Patnode we loaded the Otter with warm clothes exra warm clothes, grabbed a few snacks, and headed out hoping the cold weather hadn’t locked the jaws of too many panfish.
Our first lake was one that I’ve had my eye on for while but after about 50 holes and a stuck ATV we still hadn’t put a fish on the ice by early afternoon so we decided a change of scenery was in order. Since we were dealing with unstable weather conditions that most likely were slowing the bite down it we decided that getting bit would be tough enough even if we know where they were hiding so it didn’t really make much sense to keep trying new water so we packed up and high-tailed it to another lake that I’ve had some experience on in the past… And it turns out we made the right call.
Arriving at our new lake we quickly punched a half dozen holes and instantly were on fish. My first drop resulted in a 12″+ crappie and Taylor had one just a hair smaller… A couple more drops resulted in another crappie and 2 healthy gills and it quickly turned into a competition with Taylor fishing plastics and me using a pug bug tipped with euro larva. After about a half an hour of steady action we were staying pretty even but my fingers were getting cold from having to re-bait so I decided to make a switch over and I started tipping my Pug Bug with a Red VMC Nypth plastic. The bite didn’t slow down a bit and in fact the quality of the fish was much better as compared to larva.
Not only were we quickly accomplishing our mission to ice some dandy crappies & gills but I was also working on quickly checking one of my fishing resolutions off the list as a goal of my this year was to become better at fishing plastics for panfish. The pictures speak for themselves but if you need a hint as to how my 1st time fishing the new VMC ice plastics went let’s just say I won’t be stopping by the bait shop on my next panfish trip.
Thanks Taylor for the great trip and helping to teach this old dog a few new tricks!