Icing Big Northerns

[Fool4fishg]

This is about the time of year when going after the big gators through the ice is my favorite game plan. Northerns will always allow a good deal of action and ice conditions usually let a person get just about everywhere on a body of water. Through the years I have found quite a few spots on some lakes in the northwoods that provide not just action, but the excitement of pulling a toothy beast through a whole in the ice... ( Always putting these ones back is IMPORTANT )
Most of my expertise has been done with tip ups and large live suckers, chubs, and shiners in the apropriate locations. In the last couple of years I have been trying out some rigs that allow me to use dead bait like ciscoes or smelt. It has produced the occassional fish, and usually it is a better sized specimen ! I think that if I fine tuned my presentation it would be quite rewarding. Do any of you fellow fisher people out there have a particular hook or style of set that you have perfected for using deadbait ? I want to make sure the bait sits as natural as possible in the water and this is not an easy thing to accomplish. Any help would be appreciated....
The other problem is the availablity of finding the bait. If anyone has connections on where I can obtain dead bait, pointing me in the right direction would be great !

Thanks, Andy

No matter how cold the air temperature is, when catching fish it feels like a sun filled warm afternoon !!!!

[trollingforeyes]

Give Lucky Bait a call. West of Grand Rapids on 2. They may be able to help.
218-328-5949

[-|3E|2ETTA]

Lucky Bait sure seems like a good place to by bait. I really like the mounts in their store! Great prices too! Give em' a try!
By the way my user name is "Beretta" I could not use beretta because it was taken. I hope my name has not caused to much confusion. Just squint your eyes a little and you will see it!

[stick]

As the season progresses, I like to use a big stinky dead bait (cisco, smelt, sucker...mostly suckers due to availability) and either trim the tail of a live sucker (to enhance thrashing with not much ability to move horizontally) or cut the gut of the sucker and pull the guts to hang. I feel this makes a bit of a chum trail that helps the fish smell the bait. As the season progresses, the fish are used to more dead forrage due to oxygen levels, etc.

For what it's worth...

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May your house always smell like fish...

[Jason Boser]

give Freds in deer river or Bens a try they have the best bait around and they usually have some of those big suckers
Jason

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fishing fever guide service
fishingminnesota.com/fishingfever/
phone 218-327-2191
e-mail [email protected]

[Fisher Dave]

Somebody had some Herring(Frozen) for sale here at a good price .. check in the gear under $150 forum... I was thinking of picking some up myself.