Blog

Poppee was fighting a mighty white bass and he yelled for help.  “Come here Waaalt, I neeed you nowww!”  “Leave me alone, Poppee, I’ve got one of my own on the line and there’s a school down below”, I replied.  “Even through his yelling, I could his little reel screaming drag that’s no white bass, I thought. I flipped up the Frabill Trekker tent and sure enough, his rod was straining.  Off went the gloves, out of the hole came the Humminbird transducer and then we waited.  Sure enough, Poppee gained quickly, too quickly and a 12” white bass popped through the hole …

Baskin Robbins has 31 flavors but Custom Jigs & Spins only has twenty. While we prefer orange sherbet in a waffle cone, big crappie prefer orange sherbet on a Shrimpo! Just what the heck are we talking about? Ice jigs of course. New colors of ice jigs! Orange sherbet, crawdaddy, motor oil, cotton candy/glow, catalpa worm, pearltreuse, lemon lime and candy corn are eight new colors that we added to Custom Jigs & Spins Finesse Plastic, Ratsos and Shrimpos. Each Ratso and Shrimpo comes in three hook and weight sizes; 10, 8 and 6 with either painted, gold or nickel plated h …

No matter what we did, the bluegill wouldn’t bite. We could see them. We were peering down the hole in the three-foot, ultra-clear water but the bluegills were circling the wagon’s...’Er the ice jigs. "Can you see them, Poppee", I yelled. "Yeah and they don’t want to bite", he yelled back. We tried everything that day and had only managed a few for the pan. If you’ve never peered down the hole in ultra-clear water, you haven’t lived,...’Er fished. You’ll need a good dark tent to see clearly. We like the a dark tent that shields you from all light penetration and the flip-over design, …

Live bait is like a security blanket’ you feel lost and all alone without it. Time was when I never ice fished without live bait. But times have changed. With the recent advances in plastic, lure and scent technology, I feel confident traveling on nearly any body of water without bait. In fact, I think anyone can learn to ice fish without bait. Much as you fish for bass, walleye and panfish in the open water, the same principle applies to ice fishing. Fishing without live bait Fishing without live bait is a weaning process. At first it's best to take little baby steps. You should fis …

Ice fishing is a daunting endeavor, especially for the first time angler. On our first time out many years ago, we didn’t have much gear. We had a few Ratfinkees, two rods, two buckets and some wigglers for bait. We were after yellow bass and yellow bass supposedly liked wigglers. We walked out on our local lake, and found a few open holes. As luck would have it, we caught one after another and we were hooked on ice fishing forever! The next weekend we went back to the same lake, the same area and found our old holes. This time we had an auger and we drilled a couple of new ones next to t …