Do these 3 Things NOW to keep your Ice Season Rolling!

The ice season is sadly on the downhill side of the season and some lakes are showing signs of the February slowdown.  Fish tend to slow down in February as the ice builds and the crowds are thick at popular Iowa lakes/rivers. There are a few simple things that ice anglers need to do to get through this tough time and onto the late ice bite...which can be even better than first ice.

#1- FRESH LINE: Now is a perfect time to get some fresh line on your reels.  You DO NOT need to take all the line off and fill your entire spool with new line.  Most ice fishing line spools come with 100 yards of line on them.  That is enough to re-line 2 or 3 reels.  Leave plenty of older line on your reel and put the fresh right on top.  If you need more than 100 feet of line on your ice reel...you aren't fishing in Iowa.

#2- TRAVEL: One sure fire way to beat the winter slowdown is to travel to highly populated lakes.  Some lakes are better than others, some just have more fish in them than others.  Water quality, reproduction cycles, and angler pressure can all lead to this.  Research and find what lakes are "full" of fish, it will make a huge difference this time of year.

#3- TURN IT OFF: If you are using Forward Facing Sonar on the ice, it is time to turn it off.  Not all the time, but when you locate fish and use a Vexilar to catch them, do not leave the FFS in the water pointing at the fish you are trying to catch.  I have seen this over and over throughout the winter seasons.  Some fish will move from their location if you leave the FFS pointing on them.  The signal of a FFS unit is strong, the fish can feel the sonar and some will react negatively towards it.  Simple fixes include; pulling it out of the hole or pointing it another direction.  The signal frequency of a Vexilar unit will omit anywhere from 150 to 300MHz, while a FFS, like a Livescope will omit 600-1,100 MHz.  Yes, the fish can feel that and make the leave the area.

These are a few things you can do in the near future to keep catching good numbers of fish through the ice.  With the current forecast...you may want to bookmark this article because late ice may be here sooner than later.  :(

1 Often OVERLOOKED aspect of using a VEXILAR

 

Using a Vexilar while ice fishing is a typical thing anymore.  The Vexilar FL-8 was introduced in the 1980s and ice fishing has never been the same since.  The ability to see under the ice to locate fish, brush and weeds changed the game forever.  It is still the most popular device used on the ice today for anglers.  Even though it is the most popular ice electronic in the Midwest, anglers often forget a key element that a Vexilar can do for them while ice fishing.  

No matter what model of Vexilar you may have, this often overlooked information can be detected with your unit.  The easy things for all Vexilar users are visually seeing the bottom, brush, weeds, your bait and of course the fish.  On those great days of ice fishing as your jig starts to fall, the fish will swim out of nowhere and meet up with your jig, a little bump on the rod and up comes the fish.  Simple, and yet so satisfying.  Those days are few and far between.  Typically, locating fish and knowing whether there are fish under us or not while ice fishing is as far as most anglers get while using a Vexilar.  There is much more.

The most often overlooked aspect of using a Vexilar is reacting to the mood of the fish.  This is much more than following the fish "up and down" the water column.  Vexilar is a real-time sonar device and we as anglers need to use that information to our advantage.  Whenever our bait is down the hole we need to be analyzing the behavior of the fish.  Think of it as a Cause/Effect relationship.  If you are jigging your bait aggressively and a fish shows up...that action of your jig brought the fish nearby.  Use that information to catch it.  If the fish is getting closer (colors turning from green to yellow to red) then keep that jigging action going.  If that signal is not getting "stronger", (turning back from red to yellow to green) then make an immediate change in the cadence of your bait.  It truly is a cat/mouse game all the time.  The more you can focus in on what the colors on the Vexilar are telling you, the better you can adjust your cadence to get more fish attracted to you, and then get them to bite.  Some days all fish will react the same, mostly due to weather patterns or light penetration through the ice.  However, most days each fish has its own mood that we need to detect while it is under us.  Most do not give you much time to make this adjustment.  Be aware of the marks on your Vexilar and always think about the reactions of the fish, they are telling you what they like...and don't like. The more we can decipher this the more fish we will catch.