Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - January/February 2015 - 23

Laurel Lake, Pine Grove Furnace State Park, Cumberland
County, is one location to ice fish for perch. It also holds stocked
trout and pickerel. Stocked trout will often respond to some of the
same techniques used to convince panfish to hit.

Using live bait

Fresh live bait is essential to consistently catching
panfish. If you're using waxworms or maggots, make sure
that they are alive and moving. If you're using minnows
and maintaining them at home, keep them active with
fresh water changes. Hook them as lightly as possible, and
use a very sharp hook. Sharpening the hooks on your ice
flies can help. Hooking minnows just behind the dorsal
fin above the spine will help keep them lively and natural
appearing. Anglers often target crappies with minnows on
a small spinning rod and a bobber, but some of the biggest
crappies can be caught on tip-ups. While the tip up can
have a heavy line for most of its length, use a segment of
lightweight monofilament line about 2-feet long on the end
to avoid startling fish. Use a Fathead Minnow or small shiner
minnow. Bigger minnows will attract pickerel, pike and
Muskellunge that may bite off your rig. Set the tip-up as light
as possible. When a bite occurs, set the hook as quickly as
possible. If you can avoid using heavy splitshots, crappies will
be less likely to drop the bait as they swim off.

Make your bites count

If you have plenty of bites but few hookups, try waiting
for the secondary inhale. This occurs when a panfish
only lightly sucks in your lure and bait. When a panfish is
biting extremely lightly, it can take the lure and bait only
halfway into it's mouth. Usually, the fish will inhale again
and suck the bait and ice fly, causing it to be hooked. This
is particularly common with Bluegills that are biting lightly.
Don't wait for a bobber to get pulled under water when
fishing finicky fish. Instead, keep a finger on the line, so you
can set the hook at the slightest nudge of your line. If you are
using a sonar unit, pay close attention to when a fish rises
off the bottom and moves toward your lure. Light bites often
happen when fish are coming up from the bottom.
PFBC website: www.fishandboat.com

Finicky crappies can be caught during the daytime
as well as in the evening. If they aren't tempted
by Fathead Minnows, use smaller baits. This nice
Black Crappie was caught through the ice in Sweet
Arrow Lake, Schuylkill County.
Try a "spoon dropper" to attract more fish
and catch finicky ones. Remove the treble
hook, and attach a short line of only a
couple inches to a jigging spoon. Tie on a
small ice fly. This rig will attract quality
panfish and allow them to take a smaller
lure than they were initially attracted by.

Dusting it up for perch

Yellow Perch can often cruise a lake bottom slowly in
schools looking for food. If you find a school, you can get
into hot action. If you don't happen upon a school, your
fishing can be downright slow. Attract perch to your location
by repeatedly bouncing a jigging spoon or other large ice fly
into the bottom. It will stir up bottom sediment and create a
disturbance that may attract perch and other panfish.

Find the vegetation

Ice fishing in Pennsylvania for panfish often begins with
trying to find the fish. If you are able, look for areas in a lake
or reservoir with remaining live aquatic vegetation. Sparse,
live vegetation often holds good numbers of fish while
extremely dense aquatic vegetation can be hard to fish. Some
reservoirs have very little submerged aquatic vegetation. Find
these areas, and you can have hot ice fishing action as long
as the vegetation stays alive. Savvy winter anglers spend time
in the fall cruising their favorite lakes with a boat to look for
winter ice fishing spots.
Pennsylvania Angler & Boater * January/February 2015

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Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - January/February 2015

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