Page 4 - Crappie NOW - January 2017

Story & photos by Vic Attardo

I n recent years the emphasis in ice fishing for crappie has been

on small soft-plastic baits. These highly flexible and tantalizing bits
are great crappie attractors. I don’t dispute that. But sometimes when
ice fishing for crappie, particularly when conditions get tough, you
need to go after them the old fashion way -- and the oldest of the
fashions uses a minnow.
There’s hardly a warm-season crappie angler who hasn’t caught
a white or black without a minnow, but so many ice anglers are using
larva bait, which are very good, or those new soft plastics, also very
effective, but neglect the first bait in the book, live or dead minnows.
Minnows are surprisingly versatile in that they can be fished
on a range of equipment and unlike small soft plastics accompanied
by equally small jigs, they can be worked through a greater range of
depth.
Last winter after drilling around a good crappie lake with my
Ion battery-operated auger, I found where the greater concentration
of crappie were holding rather deep, 15 to 18 feet. While a tungsten
jig and an itty-bitty soft plastic would certainly reach that depth, the
control and feel I’d have at that level frankly wouldn’t be good. The

4 Crappie NOW January 2017