Late winter farm pond tactics?

[captn160]

I fish a lot of farm ponds. As soon as we have open water, what bait and tactics should I try first? I fish with all spinning gear if that helps.

[no1son]

Watch for the warmest water in the pond, generally on the northeast shore and/or where the crik or gully feeds into the pond. Watch for insect hatches; they start to come off sometimes before the ice is out on warm days. With the amount of snow you got you should also have high water, perhaps flooding shoreline trees, brush or willows. A good pair of insulated waders or a sneak boat helps get in to where you can probe around the stems.

Crappies will come in to the ice edge before it is completely melted, if warm water and insect hatches are also there. Little jigs and inch and a half or smaller plastics are often dynamite, either flipped or just dipped in and along flooded shoreline cover or out against the ice edge and back. One other tactic is hard baits like small Phoebes, Swedish Pimples or jigging Rapalas (that sort of vertical hard bait) fished under a slip bobber with a draw and settle presentation either along shoreline cover or right at the disappearing ice edge along the warm water.

One other thing, run off melt water often carries more oxygen than what was in the pond over winter under the ice and that not only draws fish that might have had some oxygen shortages but makes for more active ones, too.

Crappies come out of winter into heavy pre-spawn feeding and often concentrate while doing so. For us the immediate post ice into that pre-spawn is both our hottest fishing and is a time when sizes often mix more than in the rest of the year; so the biggest crappies in the water are more available to us then fishing shorelines then at other times. We will often fish warming water standing in snow and well before ice is out, once the lakes and ponds start to open up, often with remarkable success.

At that time of the year we take a lot of sunfish along with the crappies. They seem to get along well enough then so we generally find them more or less mixed, although the sunnies tend to come up to shallow warmth a bit ahead of the crappies. For sunfish definitely do not overlook insect hatches, and the hard baits under slip bobbers also do surprisingly well on them for us, smallest sizes of course. You would be real hard put to convince me to give up my Phoebes or Swedish Pimples or jigging Raps as ice out proceeds.

[captn160]

Thanks for the reply. I never thought of insects and ice belonged in the same sentence!

[no1son]

It is amazing how early some of the hatches come off.

[captn160]

What about meal worms or red worms this early in the year? Worth a try?

[deathb4disco]

Small baits fished slowly or under a float. As no1son said, finding water that's just a little warmer will help, too.

[no1son]

Meal worms, waxies, red worms will all work. The problem I have with them is that they tend to produce so many deep hooked fish. The best way I have found to avoid that with live bait is to use size 6 or 8 circle hooks. Another thing that seems to work is the mooska type heavy-fishing ice fishing jigs (sizes 10 and 12) where they tend to bite only up to the head of the jig and not take the whole thing deep. Actually a lot of ice fishing jigs work well pretty much year around for sunfish and with the live bait mentioned above and with a lot of the plastics (and gulp and crappie nibbles for that matter).

I usually use the little plastics and fish tight lines to get a hook set quickly, and a small enough offering to get a complete take rather than just nibble nibble nibble. Sunfish are also masters of the quick spit; so you have to be on your toes with the plastics much more so than with live bait.

Around here sunfish seem to have a thing about small twister tails; if you can find the littler ones that are flexible enough to have action in the colder water, they often work wonders, too. Too many of those I have had simply do not twist worth a darn in colder water. Big names, little names, no-names they all seem to stiffen up too much to work well early in the season, else I would suggest the 1" sizes of those, too.

[RetiredRR]

The longer you wait, the closer to the bank they get for the spawn. You got some good info here, good luck and post some pics.

[no1son]

If you can get leaf worms instead of the red worms, they seem to be tougher at about the same size. They also take room temperature a whole lot better than red worms do. Pretty hard to tell the difference though just by looking at them. The few times I have been able to make a comparison, it doesn't seem to me that there is any difference between them to the sunfish.

[wademaster]

I hit a pond Tuesday with my bro. We caught 20 fish (gills,crackers) using nightcrawlers 3-4ft under floats. We had the best luck with about an inch chunk threaded on the hook, instead of a big wad. We caught them mostly close to the shore (probably the warmest areas). Barely moving the bait helped, not fast. Good luck.

http://www.crappie.com/crappie/panfi...2-12-13-a.html