Sinker Size for Ice Fishing

Video Transcript

"Alright let's talk about what size sinker or split shot to use on your line. And typically these are used for your tip ups not for your jig rods. And really all it is, is it's a way of adding weight to your line so that your minnow or your night crawler or your worm gets down to the desired fishing depth that you want. Now there's all sorts of different sizes, small to large, I would certainly encourage you to use environmentally friendly sinkers that don't contain lead. And again, you can buy them in all sorts of sizes, and they just clip right on to your line. And the purpose of them, especially when fishing with a shiner or a minnow, is depending on the size of the bait you're using, that minnow is going to be actively swimming around. Now if you were to use a tiny one like this, with say an eight inch minnow, that minnow would be able to swim where ever it wanted to escape fish very easily. So with a bait like that you'd probably want to use two to three of this size sinker, in order to keep the bait the desired depth that you want. Now if you were using the very, very, small minnow, say if you were fishing for perch or black croppies, you might want to put on a much smaller one. That would allow the fish to still move easily. But at the same time it wouldn't be able to get up to a water depth that you didn't want it at. Again as you're fishing for maybe bass, two or three inch, four inch minnows, you'd want to use one of these intermediate size sinkers."