Jigging technique - none active fish

Neto · **Joined:** Wed Jan 04, 2017 9:51 pm **Posts:** 38

Hely folks,

Looking to get input on jigging techniques for none active fish in the bay. I think we all know the all popular lift/rip 1-2 feet as the attraction, then away from the fish to come off the bottom and strike.
That worked for me early morning on two small fish yet in the afternoon they would come in, come off the bottom and head back down!!

What other non-aggressive techniques do guys use?

In my mind, I new I had to slow down but yet I was so excited to get one to lift and strike that I never did! I tried a couple of other random jigging techniques but they were also moderately agresive. I can only compare this to fly fishing; do you catch multiple trout on nymphs or do you entice that dry fly strike!

Thanks,
Neto

FishinScuba · **Joined:** Wed Feb 13, 2013 7:25 am **Posts:** 149

I have found a slight wiggle after the lift can get them to bite sometimes, that and I twitch my rod with my thumb on the handle has gotten reluctant eyes to bite. Did those techniques help me this weekend....... NO , my grocery store is going to run out of tomatoe juice soon if I don't have a better outing next time, lol.

Grizzly · **Posted:** Mon Jan 16, 2017 4:16 pm

one of my usual things to say to a friend who sets out bragging how he caught a fish lol ... ANYONE CAN CATCH A FISH WHEN THEY ARE BITING!!.... when the bite is totally off you have to become an angler trying to unlock the secret to make a non feeding fish feed this can be done and the more tricks you have in your bag of tricks the better fisherman you become . and when you become so good and you just cant get a bite you wanna take a gun and blow your head off lol . look for a tree to hang yourself. something.. ANYTHING!! lol god knows you can catch fish why not today??

Way I see it is either you run out of time before you unlock the secret, or things change and it just unlocks itself pretty much they start to feed lol I fished the other day sun up to sun down had many fish but could not unlock the secret buddy beside me gets one fish a guy 40 feet away gets 4 fish .... god I know I can fish lol so I ponder the whole day in my head what the heck went wrong.... next day head out and find fish in the exact mood as the day before come on fish take it! Take it! and nothing......... you would figure its a numbers game and in time one out of a 100 will bite lol and usually it happens that way sooner or later even a blind dog who cant smell gets a bone!

rule of thumb is get a fish to rise he will take the bait like a cat and a string so what do you do when you get 100 to rise and none to hit?? same thing time and time again fish shows he rises you raise he stops......... at this point you most likely will not get that fish. he has already cast you aside and isn't having any of it! trick one....... fish rises you stop and wiggle.... trick two lol ...... so on and so forth .

Think about it like this.. most use a flasher we can see there is a fish down there..... this changes our mood it does not change the mood of a fish. I have to remember the times when I just sat on a bucket and caught fish no flasher no anything.... to be good it was all the technique you tried one then another until you hit on the secret. all the time flyin blind......... pretty much what I learned from a sonar is there is usually always fish down there lol how many times, how many holes did we drill thinking no fish this is a bad spot lol

had a humble experience one time I fished with a guy me new school him old school and he schooled me big time I could not get a fish flasher and all id say fish just arnt taking and he would flop another fish on the ice and say yah I know what you mean as he digs in his bucket for more minnows I just got redder and tried harder and then it totally dawned on me hit me like a ton of bricks right upside the head the reason why he was catching fish was because he could not see the fish he was catching and I was seeing fish and was not catching them. I was fully focused on my flasher and he was fully focused on nature and his jigging tempo .

Any fool can catch a fish when they are biting, and I still get skunked but usually the reason is I get bull headed and cant stop my way of thinking . and that dam flasher is showing me fish and I change, the fish do not...... try to correct this bad habit..... go on I dare you! lol

I guess I could sum this up in a sentence and did not need to be so long winded so in essence what you did to bring in the fish is what you need to do to catch the fish he is already coming so why did you change the rhythm?? Naturally you know why. because you watching the red line get bigger and broke the rhythm Humm try to think like a minnow that is about to be eaten. do you think it would stop 2 feet up and say go ahead eat me?? lol a feeding fish will rise up and take chase you pause a split second he eats it you win.. that's a feeding fish what about a fish that isn't really hungry? you stop and he says yah WHATEVER and drops back down!

In closing I dare guys to try something...... when you catch a fish or unlock the secret turn off the flasher and just use that rhythm I bet you will be surprised at how you will still catch fish no eyes, fishing blind.I pretty well learned this one day when I fished the day before and found what worked went out the next day with a dead battery , no flasher and out fished my friends who all had flashers. just remembering the rhythm from the day before .......... ok ok I'm just full of sheet and nothing I said is true and even matters but when the bite is tough what the heck you got nothing to loose just another marked fish that didn't bite lol

Dmanwithnoname · **Joined:** Sun Jan 01, 2017 8:11 pm **Posts:** 9

Enjoyable post grizzly, I found your essay most amusing- all these things have crossed my mind lol.
I

TheLandshark · **Posted:** Mon Jan 16, 2017 6:43 pm

It's neat that I have the biggest fish Grizz ever iced on video

TrophyHunter · **Posted:** Mon Jan 16, 2017 6:58 pm

Mike you know better than to kick the bear LoL :lol:

Trannyman1 · **Posted:** Mon Jan 16, 2017 8:34 pm

Great read Chuck. One thing I would add is that on some occasions when the eyes are coming in but not committing, I will put on a bigger spoon one one rod and pound the bottom for a couple minutes and then go back to the other bait that has been working. Some days it will do the trick.

Al

Shonnr · **Joined:** Fri Nov 20, 2015 4:34 pm **Posts:** 21

I read an article onc that said cut your minnowsin half. The first time I tried it I hooked a 10 lb walleye. Hooked him in the tail. The article said that sometimes this will make them swat your lure by the tail. I'd say this is accurate cecause the first time I tried it I tail hooked my biggest walleye on the ice. Went on to catch three more that day. I noticed that by hooking the minnow sideways through two hooks slowed the jigs decent. I hooked all three fish on the lures decent.

Neto · **Joined:** Wed Jan 04, 2017 9:51 pm **Posts:** 38

Interesting responses in how we try to entice those strikes. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't!

Thanks guys
Neto

jkd24 · **Joined:** Thu Jan 21, 2016 2:34 pm **Posts:** 386

I was out saturday afternoon in hay bay,went out with 5 other guys everyone had a flasher except myself. The bite was horrible. I just got done saying to the one lad "we are in the dead zone!" Ten minutes later I landed a 6lb'er. Everyone was marking fish but couldn't get them to take. Goes to show flashers are nice to have but they dont guarantee fish.. Im not claiming to be a pro but luck does have something to do with it.. I was using a lipless crank tipped with minnow head. Its silver in color with a little bit of blue n green on it... another funny thing is out of the group I was the only guy who didn't move to a differant hole.

Neto · **Joined:** Wed Jan 04, 2017 9:51 pm **Posts:** 38

jkd24 wrote:

I was out saturday afternoon in hay bay,went out with 5 other guys everyone had a flasher except myself. The bite was horrible. I just got done saying to the one lad "we are in the dead zone!" Ten minutes later I landed a 6lb'er. Everyone was marking fish but couldn't get them to take. Goes to show flashers are nice to have but they dont guarantee fish.. Im not claiming to be a pro but luck does have something to do with it.. I was using a lipless crank tipped with minnow head. Its silver in color with a little bit of blue n green on it... another funny thing is out of the group I was the only guy who didn't move to a differant hole.

What type of jigging were you doing with that?
I ran a lipless last trip too(Saturday) and it did attract fish but no strikes. Tried slowing it down, short strokes, long strokes, jiggling on the spot, jiggling as I lifted.
One new one I tried with various lipless and blade baits was an aggressive lift/rip of 6-8 inches - stop and repeat - up until about 3-5 ft off bottom. That seem to lift fish quite nicely but they would head back down once I went above 5 ft off bottom.

Neto

DanElliot · **Joined:** Mon Apr 08, 2002 8:59 am **Posts:** 4329

Bait and switch.
One trick for me that has definitely helped is to have a few rods rigged. This past weekend sunday aft got a couple fish and they both bit on the "Bait and Switch". My favorite for this is either the smallest snap rap or a shiver minnow with emphasis on small. I usually put just a minnow head on the belly hook (change the belly hook to a slightly larger size). When a fish comes in and comes off the bottom but wont bite and the fish starts to head back down. I quickly reel up and drop the shiver minnow. You dont have to jig these aggressively just a bit of movement and quite often the fish will come back up to it and hopefully bite it. This is what worked for me on sunday. I marked about 8 fish and on 2 of them it worked.

jkd24 · **Joined:** Thu Jan 21, 2016 2:34 pm **Posts:** 386

Neto ,, was just jigging it steady about oh im guessing 10 12 inches or so nothing to technical it actually hit while i stopped to txt the wife saying nothing is biting and we're on our way home..

Neto · **Joined:** Wed Jan 04, 2017 9:51 pm **Posts:** 38

...sounds like I should try texting my wife more often while jigging!

IMBOW · **Joined:** Tue Dec 23, 2014 11:36 am **Posts:** 72

I concur with virtually everything Grizzly said. I fished Fri, Sat, Sun, and Mon am. I saw tons of perch in shallower water and once I got out past most of them, I probably had 50-100 walleye come underneath my lures and at least two dozen rise to the bait. I had only 4 hit!!! I tried everything! My group of five guys had similar experiences. I only know one other person that caught fish and he is the GOD of BOQ. Even he was only catching 0-2 each outing. Everyone else I talked to coming on or off the water at Huff and various places on Big Bay got skunked every day.

I personally am a two-fister. I generally have the largest jigging rap with a minnow on the treble in the right hand and a spoon with a minnow in the left hand. Usually, I catch about 60% of my fish with the right hand on the jigging rap, but not always.

I would love to tell you a trigger that works on negative fish, but my success rate proves I have some work to do. These fish were turned off. Usually, I can tease them up and they eventually just hit it. When that doesn't work, I make 1/2 to 1 foot quick lifts into the mark. If they leave, I make 2-3' lifts or shake the bait hard until they come back. If they still won't hit, I left 2' above, shake the bait, drop it 1/2 foot, shake it, and continue until they hit or I go to or below them. And, most of these techniques include the critical pause, which is usually when they hit. NONE of these techniques worked worth a crap this trip. And oh by the way, I tried most of the lures in my box. That includes flutter spoons, slab spoons, rattle spoons, crazy shaped spoons, blade baits, vibratos, jigging rap type lures, ... All my bites came on PK (peanut shape) flutter spoons, Buckshot Minnow, and Jigging Rap.

Just a week ago I was elsewhere and caught 13. I thought those fish were difficult to get to bite. The BOQ fish (the days I was there), were impossible. Very humbling...

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Jigging technique - none active fish

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