There is a whisper that can heard around the frost belt where the ice fisherman plies his craft. It tells of an ice fishing lure that is both new and old. It tells of a new take on the jigging spoon that has been a standard weapon in the ice anglers arsenal.
While ice fishing lures as a rule are much smaller than their open water counterparts due to the extremely cold water and what are sometimes lethargic fish. Small and heavy has been the order of the day for almost as long as man has ventured onto the ice in search of sustenance or just a fish dinner.
The new style Micro jigging spoons have taken the small and heavy status quo and made it super small and super light. The Micro jigging spoons that I tried last season were just barely more than 1/2" long and 2 of them could easily be covered with a dime. While I was a bit skeptical that they would be as effective as the standard ice fishing jigs that I was so familiar with. I was eager to give them a try as I had heard rumors of their effectiveness the previous season at an ice fishing expo. My first experience found me standing next to a hole in the ice with a look on my face that was described as a mix of confusion and amazement, and my fishing buddy gleefully gloating I told you so!
We had just pulled about a dozen nice plump bluegills out of 2 holes right next to each other in what was not much more 5 mins.. I quickly changed out to one of my old standby Bug jigs to prove to myself that the fish were simply in a feeding mood and they would bite anything. I fished my Bug jig for a full 15 mins., landing 3 more much smaller Bluegills and watching Jon land 8 more really nice sized bluegills (without bait!) before I begged him to give me back the Micro spoon I had been using.
Using the underwater camera it was easy to see how the fish were almost irresistibly drawn to the slow fluttering fall and how easily the super light spoons with a size 16 treble were sucked into their mouth vs. a standard heavy lead ice jig. Bear in mind that you will need to use a good quality, limp, small diameter line to get the best action from this style of spoon.
I have no idea how many fish we caught that day but it was certainly far more than I could have imagined when we arrived at the lake that day. I fished these spoons quite a bit last season and enjoyed some phenomenal success with them on numerous occasions. Bluegill, crappie, Perch, Trout and even the occasional Walleye gulp these down and oftentimes when they will not seem to bite on anything else in the tackle box. While I am not advocating throwing out all of your other ice fishing lures, I firmly believe that if want to enjoy better success on the ice, and catch larger pan fish on average, you should put some Micro jigging spoons in your arsenal. One thing you can be sure of is that they will certainly be in mine!
One style of Micro jigging spoons can be seen at http://www.wonderjigs.com
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