Ice Ties

[AtticaFish]

We had a good cold streak that added a nice 8" to 10" of ice on my local lakes. Been doing good with panfish and will put some fish pics up on the bragging board here soon.

Unfortunately, we are on a warm spell and bringing the ice season to an end pretty soon. A panfish ice tournament popped up for this Sunday and had a friend invite me to be a partner with him. Figured what the heck, I'll be fishing anyways so might give it a shot. Up in the air if the ice will survive till Sunday though.

Anyway, the tourney is on East Harbor that is a popular protected harbor of Lake Erie. Expansive weed beds cover this 8' to 10' deep harbor. Excellent population of bluegill and pumpkinseed along with crappie and yellow perch. With the weeds the main food source is bugs so the smaller jigs usually work best.

These are 1/100 jigs with about as junky a hook as can ever be imagined. Think I got them from Jann's sold as trout heads. They are crap.... but they are the smallest I have. 2lb line and loose drag are key to landing fish. I did tie one on a 2X strong #12 cadis hook with a tungsten bead.



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[Jay Wirth]

Nice!

 

[eddieb]

Those look good , I like the colors

 

[LedHed]

Nice work. I use to pour 1/80ths and 1/100ths with a #12 VMC hook. Got some #12 Matzuo's with a #10 bend made for Crazy Angler (they might still have some of those hooks). Pretty sure Jungle Jim has some of the VMC #12s - sent him some to some pours awhile back.
You can find smaller jig hooks, some barbless, in fly tying supplies now. Think I ordered some #18s - might have been Gamagatsu or Tiemco.....

 

[AtticaFish]

LedHed - These are some tiny little things. I have some fly hooks (not jig) that are small #14 along with a supply of tungsten beads. I'm sure i could put a little bend at the eye and make them into close enough of a jig hook.

The ice tourney never did happen. We had a lot of sunshine and some rain on the 3 days before the tournament so the organizer called it off. There were still a few people fishing the ice that day, but he didn't want the responsibility if someone got careless and found some bad ice. I actually fished on the ice at a local reservoir last Saturday and then was grilling steak on Sunday (day of the tourney) in blue jeans and a short sleeve t-shirt. All the ice in my area is pretty much shot now. It was a short but sweet ice season with only about a month worth of fishable ice. I did get out 2 or 3 times each week though! Got everything dried out and mothballed till next winter.