Are you utilizing every available strategy to ensure a successful trip that 1st time out on the ice this season? Keeping your summer fishing habits sharp will enable you to be more succssful this winter season. Here are a variety of tips and tactics designed to help you have a more successful ice fishing season this year.
 
Start with a Lake You Frequent During the Summer Months

By starting out on a lake you are familiar with you go a long way to helping your success that first time out on the ice. Most often, in the early part of the ice fishing season, you probably will be walking out to your location. This is due to ice conditions at this time of year. If you decide to get out and fish in the late fall, use that lake as your first choice for your intial venture come winter. By doing this you will have a good idea where important structure is located and where the fish will be concentrated. If you own a GPS unit take it along on this fall fishing trip. The GPS is invaluable at saving waypoints where fish are concentrated. Generally speaking these holding points will be drop off areas, weed flats ,etc. By drilling a few holes in the area you pick, you will get a good idea as to the bottom structure.

Electronic Technology

Choosing an option in this field is better than ever. Basically you have a couple of choices when it comes to choosing an electronics for ice fishing, flasher, or liquid crystal.Which one you choose is totally up to you, but a flasher will give you a little faster reading. Utilize your equipment not only to highlight bottom structure, you can also use it to help you with more successful hook setting when the fish are biting more slowly. These views will also enable you to see how the target species is reacting to your presentation and will help you land more fish. While this strategy may not necessarily be true in your warm weather fishing season, it goes a long way to landing more fish in the winter time. By observing the fishes behaviour you can change your method of fishing them. Are the fish backing away as your lure descends to the bottom, are they aggressivly approaching on the way down or on the way up? Make sure you check every hole you drill before moving on. once you have checked all your holes and do not see any fish activity your choice is to drill more holes in the area or move to a new location. Would you stay in the same spot casting over and over again with no bites in the summer month?, probably not. The same applies during the winter. Flashers and viewers can be an important addition to your winter fishing arsenal. They can be your second set of eyes into the underwater world.


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