Ice-fishing Friday: Your complete guide to slamming fish with lipless cranks

THE TECHNIQUESWhen ice fishing with lipless cranks, I recommend using a flasher unit. The real-time feed on the screen allows you to see the lure at all times, and watch exactly how the fish are reacting to it. Start by letting the lure drop to the bottom, then tighten up the slack line and jig erratically with quick flicks of the rod tip. Then lift up the lure again and repeat the process, varying your cadence so the lift-and-drop movements aren’t predictable. Most strikes will occur as the lure flutters down or hits bottom, so always be ready to set the hook on every upward swing.

When you’re set up over active fish or trying to attract fish, use long and aggressive jigging motions. Also let the lure crash into the bottom to make noise and create puffs of sediment. When fishing neutral fish, meanwhile, use soft and subtle jigging motions instead. As for inactive fish, gently lift your crankbait an inch or two off the bottom and pause, then rock it back and forth by shaking your hand. After that, let it fall to the bottom again and repeat the cycle.

If you’re trying to draw in fish from a distance (or if you’re jigging aggressively for active fish), lift your lure three or four feet off the bottom before you start jigging. That way, fish will be able to see it from further away. Those distant fish will first show up on your flasher as faint lines, which will then become thicker as the fish draws closer. Once the fish is in tight, you may need to slow things down and drop your lure closer to the bottom to trigger a strike—and discover first-hand the appeal of the lipless crankbait.

BONUS TIP: ADDED ATTRACTION

Lipless crankbaits perform best without bait, as even a small minnow head skewered on a treble will throw off the lure’s natural action as it lifts and falls. Plus, that same action will cause the bait to continually shake off. A better option to make the lure more attractive to fish is to use scent.

Over the years, I’ve experimented with a variety of different scents on lipless crankbaits. While most seem to help, liquid and gel scents thicken up and become extremely hard to apply in the cold of winter. To avoid that problem, I use Baitwaxx from Pro-Cure. Featuring a variety of different scents, the sticky, long-lasting wax mixture can be easily applied to the bodies of lipless cranks via the deodorant-style applicator.