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By: Tim Allard
atching fish from water systems receiving The latest angling tech is making it easier to C steady angling pressure will test one’s find secondary spots. Lake map contours are resolve and skills. Success often requires increasingly detailed. Garmin, Humminbird, legwork, different presentation strategies, and attention to detail. Here are some reliable tactics for catching more walleye, lake trout, whitefish, panfish, and stocked trout from community holes and waterbodies receiving heavy angling pressure.
GET AWAY FROM THE CROWD Breaking away from the crowd and exploring surrounding water can lead you to less popular, but fruitful fishing spots. My experience is these zones tend to be smaller or more subtle. They may not hold as many fish as the prime area, but they can be more willing to bite. Keeping my distance from others on small lakes when fishing flats, bays, and shorelines has worked well for walleye, crappie, and perch. Finding less popular humps, reefs, and saddles in deep, lake basins helped catch lake trout, whitefish, and walleye.
and other brands also offer software allowing anglers to make their own maps. Features can include depth contours, aquatic vegetation, and changing bottom hardness. Mapping can be done when hole-hoping, but it’s more efficient to do it from a boat and then transfer data to an ice unit.
TRY SOMETHING NEW Showing fish something different is a reliable way to get bites on pressured waters. Looking edible, yet unfamiliar can make fish drop their guard and be more willing to strike. Each year new baits come to market. These are certainly worth trying to present fish with something distinct. This winter I’m particularly excited about using the new Rattling Roach Spoon from VMC. It’s got a lot of things going for it, and reminds me a little bit of an older, discontinued Blue Fox spoon that I used to catch a lot of fish on when ice fishing.
VMC’s Rattling Roach Spoon is high on the author’s list of new baits to try on pressured waters this winter.
Another approach is doing research to learn what anglers in different areas are using to catch your favourite species. Visiting online community groups and watching videos offer insight into regionally popular lures and tactics. Trying an effective bait that isn’t popular where you’re fishing can intrigue pressured fish.
Soaking a minnow midway down in the water column fooled this lake trout for Ray Allard. Just Fishing . 36
Here’s an example. Years ago I found myself in Minnesota, listening to Joe Balog, who was living in Michigan at the time, talk about catching perch on beaded spoons. Back then, I hadn’t used these baits much. I took the
There’s something about the erratic, flashy & flutter of Slab Grabbers that drives perch wild.
hint and got some McGathy’s Slab Grabber beaded spoons. I see and hear more about them each ice season, and know these have long been popular baits on Simcoe and in the Kawartha region, they’ve been dynamite for big perch and crappie from pressured waters out my way in southeastern Ontario. Tungsten ice flies are other baits gaining wider popularity. VMC’s Tungsten Bullfly Jig is one example. Such compact jigs deliver subtle, natural movements, replicating bloodworms, shrimp, copepods, and other buggy edibles panfish and stocked trout can’t resist. Flutter spoons, like the Mepps Syclops Lite, are another bait category some walleye anglers overlook. These light, high-action spoons are worth trying if you haven’t yet already.
DOWNSIZE Dropping down to a smaller lure is a textbook play for tricking fickle fish. I often use perchsized jigging minnows, darter baits, and spoons for fooling mid-winter walleye from community holes on inland lakes. I’ve also had success with 1- and 1.5-inch twister tail grubs, finesse worms, and Berkley Atomic Tubes for rainbows, brook trout, and splake from easily accessible, popular lakes around Calabogie and Westport. These same tubes saved me years ago on (Continued on page 38.)
Winter 2024
