15 inch Crappie

Nothing happening right now during the midday doldrums, but this morning caught a nice 15 inch crappie and missed 2 others... will wait them out for afternoon bite..

Good start to the ice fishing season

Cheers and happy ice fishing..

Nice start to the season, Jerry!
Glad that you opened the ice fishing season and enjoying it!
Definitely worth staying later in the afternoon for slabs in the Kawartha

PS. If you don't mind a little observation of your jig set up with a snap.

I am not a crappie fishing expert by any means but have caught a fair share so I have noticed that with crappies , especially in cold water period, the lure have to be horizontal rather than vertical or at an angle . This way you will get more bites . So I do not use snap and just tie the line directly to the eye of a jig and select the jigs which will hold horizontally.

I also use a spring bobber on my rod tip to detect subtle strikes as crappie often bites upward so your line goes slack and with a spring bobber it's just much easier to detect.

Tight lines and have a great season!

Yes you are right.. should be perfectly horizontal.. I was just lazy.. lol.. although this jig and tube is somewhat balanced and does swim more horizontal than vertical.. but could be better.. taking off snap for afternoon.. thanks...

Beautiful MB.
Hopefully more to come 👍

Very nice. Are you sight fishing for them?
Agree with Jerkbaiter with no extra hardware if at all possible but I get lazy as well and esp. if I am trying out various baits to see what they are hitting. A couple of ways to reduce hardware. You can tie something like a surgeon's loop and slip the loop through the eye of the jig and then around the jig so that you don't really tie the line to the eye of the jig-head and then you can just do it in reverse to "untie" it and then loop another lure onto it if you wanted to change up. With regards to knots, I find the best action you can get for small baits is when you use a loop knot so the knot itself is not on the eye but above and back on the line itself so the jig can move freely along the line in the knot (great action for tiny baits and great for sunfish). Probably wouldn't have made a difference for such large crappie you are getting.

I can see bottom here only 8 fow.. but not really sight fishing get tired of looking down the holes.. Using finder to see fish and then trying to get them to hit.. I landed 2 more fish.. a jumbo perch 11in and another crappie smaller like 6 or 7 in.. very windy now..

Thanks for the very interesting knot rig setups.

Well done Jerry!!

That crappie looks at bit bigger than 15 inches and fat as well. I bet there is ten more just like it under the ice around that spot.

All good points, thanks.

I guess the main focus is on the bait to be balanced horizontally as Jerry said and that can be done even having a snap, which is convenient for fast changing lures but when the jig is not perfectly vertical you can adjust it by moving the knot on the eyelet of the lure.

I've started using those small snap rings (not sure how they called properly) for ice fishing (see pic below) and they are quite good for fast lure changing and pretty small so they don't affect the jig play but they are sometimes a pain to use if it's too cold outside. They come in variety of sizes so I learned not to use too small of a size for that very reason stated above.

Very nice, Jerry! Keep it up!

On point Jerry.
Cheers

Caught a couple more slabs in the afternoon...2 biggest crappie

The days haul... now to clean up everything.. worst part of the trip.. lol. Had a good day..

That is going to be a very nice dinner.

Awesome job Jerry, how do you like your HT Ultralight?