By Jason Mitchell

Fishing can remain frustrating, humiliating and most of all humbling regardless of how much you get to fish or how much you think you have learned.  There will always come a time when you feel like you just hit a wall.  Anybody who has never been stumped on the water just hasn’t backed the boat down the ramp too many times or they are not being honest.  Either way we have probably all pounded a lake from before sunrise to after sunset with our pride seriously tarnished.

By Jason Mitchell

The last period of safe ice typically offers some of the best ice fishing of the year for panfish like bluegill and crappie.  For crappies in particular, we often find fish shallow and the fish can often be fairly aggressive.  The locations to find crappies is often a matter of connecting the dots.  On most lakes and flowages, crappies will suspend out over holes and basins through much of the winter. 

By Jason Mitchell

By midwinter on many bodies of water, walleye location can often trend towards off shore structure and in many cases, deep structure.  With the advent of map chips, more anglers are discovering and fishing these locations.  A mistake I have made in the past when fishing deep structure is relying too much on what the contour line on the map charts.  What is more important than any contour is the transition.  The transition between one type of bottom and another.  Could be an edge where gravel meets mud.  Could be where large boulders transition to smaller rock.  This edge is often where it is at for finding offshore walleye.  Sometimes the transition lines up with a contour but so often it does not.  When it does not, you end up focusing your attention on the wrong contours and miss the mark.