Slip’s 2015 LOGS, STATUS AND STRATEGIES… 2ND HALF EDITION

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... postings concerning the second half season of fishing 2015

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20151031- what a way to say goodbye to October... Four big fish on landed two

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20151101- it’s been almost a week since I made a cast…

doing a little bit of resting and recuperating the neck shoulder and arm… some days to painful to go fishing… then overdid it with some walking with the legs and lower back…  so today I felt some improvement and decided to do a little shore fishing casting UL jigs on tiny dia line. This rod and reel is feather light can barely tell your holding it in your hand. It’s a  Eagle Claw Skins rod 5-6’  with a Shimano 50 series reel mounted storing thin 4# Nanofil… casts tiny jigs a country mile and the sensitivity is off the charts. This little setup landed my 5# SMB filling the Master Angler.

Today I put it through a work out again. As I walked to one of my shoreline spots I noticed a bass boat thoroughly working the area. I waited for him to slowly and methodically work over the area and slowly moved past. Striking up a conversation I asked how the fishing was and he replied hes gotten a few SMB’s but the fishing was slow… he was using a craw colored marabou jigs tipped with minnows… he also stated the water temps were in the mid 40’s. 10 degree difference in  a weeks time. I waited till he was out of casting distance and started working over the structure. I immediately hooked up with a heavy fish and nearly brought a huge walleye to net. One head shake and I was down a jig. The fish would have measured close to thirty.

A few short casts later I hooked up with a chunky SMB that just shook loose after a beefy battle. The next few hits came quickly in succession landing a 15” class that I thought was a rock bass at first. Had the heart pounding for a bit. Felt good to bring the next one also to net at 18.5”. All that activity after another angler just covered that spot?

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15" class caught on a 2" Berkley Ripple Shad

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20151104- in preparation for the upcoming ice fishing season here in Mid Michigan preliminary mapping of potentially good ice fishing lakes or owning a precise lake map is a necessity.

yesterday taking the jon boat out onto Lake targets equipped with the elite 7 HDI ... our mission was to map two lakes.Starting out the morning we elected to map the most remote lake with very restricted access and work our way back.

While creating a grid by following strategic paths on the GPS map we covered every square yard of the lake. When creating this grid we located many schools of fish in tight groups in deep water. we brought along a few rod setups to cover the whole vertical spectrum of the water column from slip bobbers to vertical jigging setups. to identify the fish tightly grouped in the schools in deep water we lowered ice fishing jigs tipped with live waxys or pink gulp waxies... We caught many crappie and bluegills of various sizes down to 4 inches long in over 25 feet of water. A great way to identify the fish species is by lowering tiny baits in front of their noses.

Pink GULP waxies outproduced the live waxies. The coloring and the scent of the GULP probably had a slight edge over the natural presentation in deep water.

By the end of the day we covered both small lakes and obtained many waypoints to hopefully expedite a successful ice fishing season.

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20151107-PUTTING ANOTHER LAKE ON THE MAP

Using the Lowrance Elite 7 HDI and the Insight Genesis Mapping solution created a beautiful map of this small lake in less than an hours time.

it was on the way home from a  lake that we mapped further north. I remember fishing a couple times and getting skunked.... but remember alot of kayak only type of water north of this lake. after the success ive had fishing water past sumer in mere inches i thought i might give this lake one last try for fish in the shallows. while mapping the lake we marked many fish in the deep basins but only tagged a few smallish fish when we fished the school. might be a lake that harbors small or stunted fish

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20151108- Today was about” Fishing in the Zone”

Exploring the shallows in Five Lakes with sonar scans and slip bobbering live waxies revealed an absence of fish life no minnows no nothing! So moving on to the next break was a significant drop off extending into the main lake basins up to 60 FOW. I marked waypoints on significant tight schooling of unidentified fish to be fished later. Continuing sonar scanning of the break revealed a total absence of fish in over 99% of the water. Today if you were without electronics you would have literally been screwed and fishless. We started fishing one of the waypoints with short rods UL ice fishing presentations and vertical presentations with live waxies on tiny hooks. We caught multitudes of B’Gills in the 5 to 7” range at multiple waypoints showing tight schooling of fish. I tagged a 25” N.Pike fishing the school. This fish needed to be teased off the bottom on the Pink GULP Waxie tipped on the 1” long Siska Smelt Stix. Saw this fish on the sonar hit the bait presentation. No sonar = no fish would have been the equation for the day.

 

Our rigs consisted of my ice fishing arsenal from the winter all rigged and ready to go. Two rigs had 2 # fireline ice braids and one had 2# fluorocarbon and lastly one with 2# mono. Earl and I quickly displaced use of the non-super line rigs with the braid. Absolutely no-feel with the floro and mono rigs… you relied on visual tip movement. This ice fishing season the non –superlined rigs are getting respooled. The definitive argument in the decision to respool for the winter.  Mono and fluorocarbon provided a significant diminutive fighting experience from the gill. Fighting a sponge Bob feeling on the end of my rod is not what im after in the sport. Super lines have always provided an electric solid feel to the fish and was severely absent in these two rods. They were quickly put aside in favor of the braided rigs. This is the final decisive argument for me and braid… im in it for the fight and braid provides that edge. I feel every head shake and jaw grinding experience provided by the gill… sadly if you are not using super line … you are seriously missing out!

 

We quickly filled a no-cull slot of 12 fish under 7.5” for filleting.

 

the breakdown of the catch of the day included over 120 gills  1 N. Pike

 

62%     0-6" B'Gills
24%     6-7.5" B'Gills
14%     7.5 - 9.0 B'Gills

 

the basic rig of the day were UL ice fishing rods with 2lb ice braid loaded on 50 series spinning reels on 24 lg ice rods. tiny hooks Polomared above a 3" long tag end with a tiny split shot clamped at the end. Thin braided line is an important component of this whole setup. The tiny hook and bait aided in hooking and allowing to tag and identify the schools of fish in the zone marked on the sonar. dropping the bait beneath the transducer allows the sonar to track the bait to the right depth. watch the fish grab the bait and hook up. what a great way to fill a slot limit for dinner.

 

please remember to consider fishing a slot limit.

 

One of the top tier Michigan Gills

Nice N.Pike teased with an ice jig from the bottom... small baits will catch big fish if you are in the ZONE

fishing the ZONE by tagging the fish marked by sonar... drop the bait in front of their noses.

 

the basic rigging...