How to Bait a Jig for Ice Fishing

Video Transcript

"Let's talk now about what you might want to bait your jig or your tip up with and there's a bunch of different choices that you could use. The most popular of which for ice fishing is simply a minnow or shiner. These are relatively small ones. You can get them from half this size up to 10 inches and again like everything else you want to use the size and the type of bait that is most appropriate for the fish that you are fishing for. For example the minnow I just showed you would be a fine minnow for either perch, for crappies or for bass. For bass you could even go up to a 4 or 5 or 6 inch minnow if you are really looking for the big one. If you are talking trout, stick towards the smaller 2 to 3 inch shiners. If you are going for pike some people use up to 10 inch shiners for pike. Now there are some other choices too. Although people think of night crawlers or worms as being more for summer fishing you can also use these for ice fishing as well and you can break off a little chunk and that works real well for perch or pan fish or sun fish, you can use the whole crawler, that works well for trout. There is also what are called spikes or maggots, essentially just fly larvae and those they typically pack them in sawdust as you see here. Those are really good for pan fish and there are also artificial maggots that you can purchase that also work well."