Choosing Ice Fishing Jigs & Lures

Video Transcript

"Let's talk now about what jig and lures you want to use for your jig rod because the um, the choices are literally endless. You can spend, you could spend your life savings just amassing different types of lures and jigs. Some of the ones that I have here are specific for lake trout and they very both in shape, size and color. There's two basic kinds of jigs. One is what's called a vertical jig, where you simply tie your line to the top and then it hangs vertically in the water column. When you lower it down it tends to flutter in the water a little bit. There's also what are called horizontal jigs and these you would tie your line right here and then they sit horizontal in the water column. These tend to twist and move a little bit more. Depending on the day and fish species, they’re going to want one or the other. There's also all sorts of different jig heads that you can use. Different sizes, shapes, this happens to be a darter head. You could attach minnow or a night crawler to the end of this and jig it in the water column. You can attach soft plastics to these. There's also other jigs called stand up jigs. Essentially these stand up on the bottom to allow your bait or your artificial lure to stay off the bottom, again specifically for Lake Trout. They have others called buck tails that have this hair on the back that can act to attract the fish. And for pan fish, there's all sorts of different options, again various sizes and colors. You just want to be specific to what you're fishing for. Are you fishing for small pan fish, bigger predatory fish, some of these here will imitate either small fish that the pan fish would eat or perhaps a bug larvae that's found in the water column."