FINDING THE FISH

from Ice Team Digital Magazine | February 2022

A DAY ON THE ICE MATT JOHNSON

As an Ice Fishing Instructor, I often see the last piece of the puzzle to come together for newer anglers is finding the fish. We can teach all about drilling holes, jigging techniques, reading the

Vexilar, but none of it really matters unless you are on fish. This was the last piece of the puzzle that came together for me personally and I have learned a few things. Here are a couple of Of course, my Navionics phone app is the most valuable tool in my fish finding kit. Pairing that app with many hours spent on the water playing the process of elimination game teaches you a few things. One thing I learned from Dave Genz is to think of the water is size of football fields and tennis courts. First search the area in the size of a football field and when you find some fish, break that down into the size of a tennis court. As the leader of WI Women Fish, I am often the one that goes ahead and finds the fish for the group. I use the football field method but be sure to have that “field” include a variety of depths.

One experience I had was finding crappies in March for a group of 75 anglers. I used my Navionics App (upgraded subscription) and color code fishing ranges. If you open your app and click on menu, scroll down and you will see Fishing Ranges. There is an on off button and if you are unable to turn it on, you are using the free version and that feature is not available. If you have the upgraded version you can turn it on, and select certain depth ranges to assign a color. This feature alone is well worth the small annual fee.

During my pre fishing, I found crappies in the deepest holes. I adjusted my ranges to highlight 28 to 31 feet in pink. Many pink circles jumped out at me, and I went to several “pink” areas and caught fish. When the group came out, I split them up around each of the pink holes I had open my map and everyone caught crappies. I was able to eliminate water, just by having those deep holes highlighted.

In a completely different situation, I was fishing a lake that is chuck full of thick weeds. The bowl-shaped lake has weeds that come as high as 15 feet, and the max depth is 20 feet. The only part of the lake that does not have weeds is the 20 foot hole. The lake has huge crappies and gills,

but they can be hard to locate in all the cover. I used the underwater camera to help with my search, but I made some critical mistakes. When using the “football field” method I would drill a hole and look with the Aqua - Vu camera and the Vexilar. Being in a hurry to find the fish, I moved thru the area’s quick quickly. After spending quite a bit of time doing that, I felt defeated and frustrated and I knew there should have been more fish around. I went back to where I started and hunkered down longer at each hole. Once I sat for a while, gills began to emerge from the thick weeds and found my bait. I adjusted my position a few times to be in more of an opening in the thick forest of weeds to be sure my bait was visible. A clear example of how small moves can be big moves. My initial mistake was moving through the area too quickly.

The last experience I will share is while search for pan fish on cribs. I had found a nice area filled with fish cribs while fishing open water with my boat. Using my Humminbird side imaging, I marked the cribs and went back over until I located them on down imaging and marked them on my Navionics app. I went back in the winter and found great fish on that structure. I returned the next week with a group, and the cribs were empty. I knew the fish could not have gone far and began to search the deeper water next to where the cribs were. Sure enough they were located in the deeper holes of the basin, The bite we found in the basin, was a combination of being in the right depth, and hunkering down waiting for the fish to come to us. In the past, I may have left those initial way points and moved on to some similar way points that I had in a different area of the lake, and likely would have found the same results. Fishing memories is a trap many anglers fall into. My experience has taught me that the fish are close, just look a little harder to find them in nearby deeper areas.

Finding fish is about having a systematic approach and using all the tools you have in your fish finding toolbox. Mapping, electronics, proper presentation, are all very important, but most of all, experience will help you the most in the long run. Remembering those valuable lessons that the fish are teaching us, is what makes us better anglers.