ELECTRONICS ON ICE

By Bob Jensen

Finding the fish is perhaps the most important ingredient to fishing success. That’s true in open water, and it’s true through the ice. If you want to catch the fish, you need to find them.

Whether you’re fishing open water or through the ice, the best way to find the areas that fish are using is through the use of sonar. In open water, we use sonar to find the locations that the fish are using. We do the same with sonar in our ice fishing: However, sonar in our ice-fishing can also offer some clues as to the fish’s attitude and even give us some ideas as to how we should present our lures.

First the difference in sonar use in open water and ice-fishing. In open water, many anglers simply use their sonar to find structure. They find the structure they want to fish and start fishing.

Other anglers find the structure, then look around the structure to see if any fish are present. If there are fish, we try to catch them. If there are no fish, we look for another structure that has fish.

Now to ice-fishing. We can’t troll around looking for fish, but we can pop a few holes and use our sonar to see if fish are present. Same deal here: Fish a hole for a few minutes, if you don’t see fish, move to another hole.

However, if we do see fish on our sonar, we can let them tell us how they want the bait presented.

Let’s say you’ve been sitting on that hole for five minutes and finally a fish moves in. Let’s say you’re jigging your bait pretty aggressively. A fish moves in quickly and whacks it. That’s good.

However, let’s say the fish swims right up to the bait, but won’t hit. You jig and jig and jig, but finally the fish moves away. If that happens more than a couple times, even once is enough, that’s your cue to move the bait slower. If they come in and look at the bait but still won’t take, try going larger or smaller with the bait, or try a different color, just do something different. If they’re looking but not eating, give them something different to look at.

If the fish are moving in and hitting right away, that means you’re really good or they’re really hungry. You might want to try a bigger bait, as bigger baits will often attract bigger fish.

Also, bigger baits get to the bottom quicker. Generally the fish are near the bottom, so a bigger(heavier) bait will get to the bottom quicker and you’ll get bit quicker.

Of course if going big doesn’t work, go back to what you were having success with.

It’s amazing how good a picture sonar can create for ice-fishing. The MarCum LX-3 can separate a fish and a bait that are just an inch or two apart, and the new LX-5, with the TrueColor display, will do even better. If you can see the fish, you have a better chance of catching them.

Be sure to take full advantage of your sonar when you’re ice-fishing. If you let it show you what the fish want, you’re going to catch more fish.

For more fish-catching information, visit fishingthemidwest.com