Changing It Up

There are some days that we need to look at targeting other fish than the ones that we target daily. We have a lake that offers a good population of pickerel and bass with some good size to them as well and try and get out there a couple of times per season.

My son looks forward to fishing here as well and always has high expectations as we walk onto the ice. The area that we target is a small cove that has a small creek dumping into it and the water depth ranges from 4-7 FOW.

This is a shallow and weedy lake and has no contours to it as well. There is a river that flows through and this cove is in its path so that is why we typically fish here. Tactics used are setting tip-ups out with a variety of sized shiners for enticing the fish to bite.

It didn’t take long and the first pickerel was on and these fish have some decent size to them. We really wanted to catch some bass as we generally do well with sizes here but the pickerel were the fish of the day. We did manage 2 average sized bass but had 30+ pickerel for the time we were out there.

Our typical style of fishing is jigging for panfish but occasionally, is nice to change things up a bit and chase some other species. Fishing tip-ups is a great way of getting the family out there and have an enjoyable experience on the ice chasing flags.