Featured Stories

Learn the benefits of adding soft plastic lures to your ice fishing arsenal and how to use those baits effectively.

I can easily recall my first time ice fishing with soft plastic lures because it was my first time ice fishing. I fished with a couple of fishing industry friends, both veteran ice anglers from Minnesota. Jigs and spoons owned the ice fishing world at that time, and few ice anglers ever used soft plastic lures. To me, though, it seemed like the same lures I used for vertical presentations to cold-water crappie and bluegills on open water should work through the ice. So, I begin my ice pilgrimage by going against the grain, using a soft plastic crappie bait on a jighead that wasn’t even an ice jig.

Fishing from marinas and other docks provides a great way to consistently catch crappie during the coldest time of the year. Here’s everything you need to know.

You will never hear Chris Edwards call himself a winter crappie dock-fishing expert, but considering this avid outdoorsman’s history with the activity and the container of splashing slabs hanging in the water nearby, there’s no doubt he could.  

Edwards has a lifetime of dock fishing experience across Oklahoma that began in his youth when his parents had a place on Grand Lake O’ The Cherokees. Thereafter, he’s always had a dock somewhere in the state – Texoma, Keystone, Ft. Gibson and Eufaula. He’s made sure of that with one season and one purpose in mind: January to March crappie fishing.

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.

Learn the secrets of 3 highly successful anglers who are especially adept and catching crappie and other panfish through the ice.

Although hundreds of miles separate the favored hard-water fishing haunts of avid anglers Nicole Stone, Doug Sikora and Ryan Suffron, it seems the geography is the only distinguishing difference among the three’s passion for catching crappie and other panfish through the ice.

Learn the value of a float and a jig used together for mid-winter crappie fishing and how two guides use float strategies to put more fish in the boat.

“Often they won’t pull it under,” Lee Pitts said about the float portion of his Float and Fly rig. “It’ll just tip a little or start easting sideways.”

Pitts knows. As a crappie guide on legendary waters of Weiss Lake, Pitts spends most winter days on the water. Winter delivers some of the best action of the year, and one of his most productive crappie fishing techniques when the water gets cold is the float and fly approach, which refers to fishing a jig beneath a set float for slow, subtle presentations at a prescribed depth.

Beaver Lake crappie guide Greg Robinson also relies heavily on floats for winter crappie fishing. That surprises many people, Robinson noted, because they only associate bobbers with extra shallow water. However, Robinson and Pitts are commonly presenting jigs 6 to 10 feet deep. The key is that the float suspends an offering in the strike zone and allows for the extra slow and subtle presentations that are sometimes needed for winter crappie fishing success.

Ledges hold big concentrations of crappie this time of year. Learn how three veteran anglers find and catch crappie from ledges.

Crappie stay on the go in autumn, either looking for a quick meal during favorable conditions or seeking shelter, when the weather turns nasty. Some of the best places to find fall crappie that are moving are ledges, which are available in almost every lake in the country.

“A ledge in our part of the country is definitely a change in water depth, and most of the time, it is a pretty abrupt, pretty quick change,” said Freddie Sinclair, a full-time guide on North Carolina’s Jordan, Harris and Falls lakes. “Most of our ledges are hard bottom and rock.” Sinclair noted that a ledge could be a main channel drop along the old river channel or a creek channel drop in a cove or bay.

Texas angler Jeff Schwieterman defines a ledge as “a rapid change in depth – more of a vertical drop than slow slanting.” This crappie tournament veteran said depth changes of ledges can range from 1 foot up to 10 feet or more on the waters he frequently fishes. 

Bridges produce consistently good crappie action, if you know how to fish them. Learn the approaches of several top anglers.

We drive over them in our cars. We ride under them in our boats, often on the way from one fishing hole to another. Many anglers hardly give them a second thought. But when it comes to crappie fishing, maybe bridges should be an angler’s first thought.

Fishing around bridges takes a lot of the guesswork out of finding crappie, says Oklahoma fishing guide Mike Taylor. Many of his favorite waters, including Lake Eufaula, are home to multiple bridges. He rarely drops a crappie jig in the water anywhere else before pulling up to a bridge area and looking with his electronics. He’s looking for baitfish and crappie.

Whether you target walleyes, panfish or some other species, it’s important to be equipped with the right lures when you hit the ice.

If you’re an ice fisherman, few things are more agonizing than the wait for safe ice. You’ve been wearing out your weather app, hoping to start seeing crazily low lows in the 10-day, all the while dreaming and scheming about where you’ll hit the ice first and how your hard-water season will progress.

Wishing won’t ready the ice sooner, though, so you might as well make the best use of the wait time. One way to do that is to prepare your ice gear, getting all in good order and making certain you have the tackle needed when you finally get out on the ice. With such planning in mind, we’ve put a great selection ice fishing lures on sale throughout November. Everything on our Ice Fishing Lures page will be automatically discounted 15 percent in the cart through Nov. 30.

Also to aid your preparation, we’ll look at some of the lures that are important to have ready if you want to start your ice season right!

Building glow into your crappie fishing strategies can help you catch more fish, especially when the bite is tough.

“Anyone can catch a crappie when they are biting, but when the crappie are not aggressive or the bite tapers off, that’s when using a Mo’ Glo lure or Mo’ Glo Slab Jam will get you bites,” said Mississippi crappie guide Brad Chappell.

Chappell relies on Bobby Garland’s Mo’ Glo lures, which glow in the dark, when fishing deep, early in the morning or late afternoon.

When long lining, Chappell will typically rig a 1/24- to 1/8-ounce Crappie Pro Mo’ Glo Jighead. The weight of the jighead depends on what depth he is targeting.