Switching Things Up

Most of my time on the water is spent chasing panfish but the aggressiveness of trout makes a trip or two a winter time well spent. The day began when I dug out one of my old handheld GPS units to pull a few waypoints. On the water well before daylight, a buddy and I started a nearly mile walk through 6" of snow with a little slush underneath. We were rigged up with different presentations. I started the day with a rattle spoon and my buddy had a jigging rap tied up. Right off, some lookers came in hot but turned away without a strike. We both sifted through the boxes of various baits, big and small, until I had the first hook up of the day. The bite came on a new addition to the Clam Pro Tackle lineup, the Leech Flutter Spoon. While the fish was only 20", it got the ball rolling. The numbers of fish that would come in and check out a bait per hole made the lack of hook ups very frustrating. We targeted a large, gradually sloping flat that drops abruptly into deep water. The bottom is rocky with a great number of crayfish which seems to draw in fish nearly all day as long as commotion above the ice is limited. Back when I fished this flat frequently, we would jig up the crayfish and use them as bait. They always produced far better than any other bait we tried! Sitting inside the Clam Kenai Thermal Stealth, you could watch the fish swim in, look at the bait, and swim away without much of an appetite. We only fished until about 10:30 when the wind picked up. Actually getting to watch how negative the fish were made the decision to leave for warm meal easy!