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.

By Jason Mitchell

A common mistake some anglers make is thinking the world below the ice is static.  The mistaken belief that nothing changes.  We have all probably been lulled into a great bite where we set up on a location and the fish basically make us look good.  The fish accelerate towards your presentation, rise up and than greet you.  The reality is that you can use several different presentations and fish those presentations several different ways and get bit.  We go home with a bounce in our step and a grin.  We also go home with confidence.  

By Jason Mitchell

Many trends and mindsets that originate over the open water season eventually transform on to the ice scene.  There was a time when walleye anglers had a hard time putting anything on a jig besides a shiner.  Today, soft plastic and water soluble soft baits have traction with the walleye crowd.  The soft plastic replacing live bait trend has slowly gained a foothold on the ice walleye world.  Just like open water, soft plastics will never replace live bait but they are a great compliment and with certain situations and applications, work much better.