How to Maximize Your Ice Fishing Success with Rattle and Glow Baits

As winter progresses and light penetration under the ice lessens, rattling sounds and glow become extra important for helping fish find your baits and for triggering strikes.

With several inches of snow atop ice that’s more than a foot thick and the fish near the bottom, nearly 30 feet below, there is no sunlight to make a metallic spoon shimmer, and it’s tough for fish to see even the boldest lure color unless a lure is almost touching them.

Predator fish find forage largely by hearing, sensing vibration with their lateral lines and via scent through the heart of winter. Lures that rattle deliver critical sound. Tipping lures with natural bait provides scent. Don’t stop there as you consider ice offerings, though. Lures that glow bring the fish’s sense of sight into the equation and help them find your lure even in the darkest of waters.

Let’s look closer at glow-in-the-dark and rattling ice fishing lures, considering situations the maximize the benefits of each and examining how to best use these offerings.

Limited Visibility

Glow baits and rattling baits have value throughout the winter (and for open-water fishing) for calling fish from father away and for triggering strikes. When these offerings truly excel and even become necessary, though, is when visibility plummets for one of several reasons.

A few common reasons that are especially important from now through the end of ice season have already been alluded to. Mid- to late winter typically brings more snow and thicker ice, both of which reduce light penetration. Most sport fish also tend to move to the deeper main basins of lakes at this time, and those that hold in the lower half of the water column tend to be in dark settings, even in the middle of a sunny day.

Of course, not that many days are sunny this time of year, and some of the best ice fishing occurs at night, which are two other factors that naturally reduce visibility.

Finally, some lakes’ waters stay dark colored or stained all the time. Rattles and glow provide benefit from the onset of the ice season, when snow cover remains minimal and fish are mostly shallow, in places like Minnesota’s Red Lake and Lake of the Woods.

Go with the Glow

To see the significance of glow colors for ice fishing, just look at color selections for Lindy Fishing Tackle ice fishing lures. Lindy’s Quiver Spoon, Rattl’n Quiver Spoon, Rattl’n Flyer Spoon, Frostee Spoon, Perch Talker and Tungsten Toad all come in glow colors, which you can charge with a flashlight or other light source.

Soft-plastic lures, which have grown dramatically in popularity among ice fishermen in recent years, are also important in the glow game. Several Bobby Garland baits, including the Baby Shad, Baby Shad Swim’R, Slab Slay’R and Stroll’R, come in Mo’ Glo colors, and all Crappie Pro Mo’ Glo Jigheads and Overbite Sickle Jigheads have glow finishes.

With any glow color, whether on a spoon, jig or soft-plastic lure, it’s important to remember to pull them out of the water and freshen the glow charge from time to time.

The Lindy Glow Spoon and Glow Streak take glow to another level. These baits come with replaceable light sticks, which you insert in them to light them up from the inside out for several hours. The light stick highlights whatever color pattern is on the lure and makes the bait exceptionally visible even in very dark water.

Rattle ‘Em In

Like glow, the significance of sound becomes apparent from a glance at Lindy’s line of ice fishing products, which has been developed over decades based on what anglers want and what catches fish (which are kind of the same thing). As you’d expect, the Rattl’n Flyer Spoon and Rattl’n Quiver Spoon feature rattles. And as we just noted, the Glow Spoon and Glow Streak both have loud rattles to call fish from afar and trigger strikes.

Varying a bit from traditional rattling lures with internal rattle chambers, the Lindy Wally Talker and Perch Talker both feature strings of beads and discs, which clang together when you lift either bait sharply or jiggle the rod tip.

Something you’ll notice when shake different rattling lures in your hand is that the pitch and volume vary substantially from lure to lure. Fish commonly show preferences to certain sounds, but one is not always better than another. It’s important to experiment, and, if you are fishing with electronics that allow you to mark individual fish and see how they behave, pay attention to responses to different lures.

Like with a shaker egg, the volume also varies depending on how sharply you move a rattling lure. Vary the sharpness of rod snaps and shakes and mix up cadences and again pay attention to the fish’s responses.

Fish Ed and Destination Fish host Jon Thelen tends to be more aggressive with rattling presentations when he does not see fish on his electronics, seeking to call in fish, and to make his presentations a bit more subtle when fish are near and looking at his lure. That said, a sharp shake can be the trigger that turns a looker into an attacker, so Thelen isn’t hesitant to try something different when fish seem hesitant to commit.

Finally, pay attention to how any given bait moves in the water when lifted and allowed to drop and what types of movements engage the rattles. Many baits only rattle when you snap them upward or shake them. The Rattl’n Quiver Spoon, on the other hand, wobbles at it falls through the water, and the placement of the rattle in the lure’s eye causes that wobble to engage the rattle.

Adding Glow & Sound

Bobby Garland Mo’ Glo Slab Jam provides an excellent option for adding glow to any ice fishing bait. It’s a sticky gel that adheres well to lures, with a very effective glow-in-the dark formula and a bonus of scent. Applying is simple. Squeeze a bit of gel onto the lure with the bottle’s applicator tip and rub between your thumb and forefinger to spread Slab Jam all over the bait.

Slab Jam sticks and holds best on soft plastic baits. Don’t let that deter you from adding some to a spoon, rattle bait or jighead, though. You just might need to reapply a bit more often to keep the glow bright and the scent strong.

Along with adding glow, you can easily add the appeal of rattles to most soft plastic offerings with Bobby Garland Crappie Rattles. Made of premium glass and pointed at one end for easy insertion, each Crappie Rattle has three tiny metal balls inside it to send out a loud, high-pitched rattle every time you shake the bait.