NAIFC

Rediculure

I once heard someone say “Having the right lure is 10% of the equation, but believing you have the right lure bumps it up to about 40%.” This has become almost a mantra to me for ice fishing, because for me it’s true. I have a jig that I know I can catch fish on any body of water and almost any species I have come across. Everyone has that one confidence boosting jig in their tackle box, whether it be a lure that has a particularly big fish memory attached to or one that they know they can catch fish on at any time of the year. An anglers confidence lure always seems to catch them more fish. Is this something lucky about the lure or is it the simple fact that an angler believes so much more in that lure that they spend more time fishing it? I firmly believe it is the latter.

The major problem I see with many anglers is that with all the new products being released to the market every year is that no one spends the time with a single lure. They are all convinced that if one of their new lures doesn’t work they just have to throw one of the new magic lures on and it is gonna turn the fish’s switch to ‘eat’. The majority of the time it isn’t the lure that causes the fish not to eat, it is the way the angler is fishing said lure. Sometimes you just have to be stubborn and refuse to switch.

One thing I think every ice fisherman needs to do is spend some time sight fishing. There is no single thing that will teach you more about how fish act towards a particular lure and how you jig the lure than by watching. Whether it be watching how walleyes react to your jigging spoon with the help of an underwater camera or by sitting in 5 feet of water in a clear lake picking off roaming crappies and bluegills; sight fishing will teach you more than any seminar, book, or video ever will. Sight fishing will also help you gain confidence in just about every lure you have in your arsenal. You will also learn things about some lures that you never would have though of, like how changing the way the knot sits on a Lindy Fatboy will get you twice as many fish, or wacky-rigging a Micro-Mino will catch you more crappies than bluegills.

By slowly going through your tackle box and trying out different jigging techniques and different plastic combinations with different lures and watching how fish react, you will be able to have several confidence lures, though they may never really replace that one lure you once landed a 2lb crappie with. Do I practice what I preach? To an extent. While I am always open to experiment on the ice, I know a blue Genz Bug with a red Lindy Micro-Mino tail will catch me fish anywhere there is ice.