[icefishingnewbie]

I have a derby tommorow just wondering what i should throw and what people are catching them on?

[mikey5string]

Im sure you'll see a lot of senkos flyin around. I'd make sure I had at least one pack as well as a pack of 1 or 2/0 octopus hooks for wacky rigs .

I have caught almost every bass so far this year with jigs, soft plastics ( crawls, tailed worms, stick worms) tex rigged or weightless, flukes fished on a weighted swim bait hook like a jerk bait or weightless twitching and letting them fall.

All in cover. Holes/edges of milfoil, Downed treed, drop-offs, rocky areas. Always be fishing something. Don't just cast randomly. Drop jigs in holes in weed patches. Let them fall straight down. Twitch. Repeat.

Let the plastics fall with slack line, twitch them, dart them in different directions, let them settle on the bottom for a minute. Try to make them act like a stupid prey item; bumping into everything and looking lost or a dying fish using its last bits of life darting aimlessly and randomly then falling in a death roll, then repeating.

And remember bass can often be found reallllly close to shore as well as deep against drop offs.

I have heard of people killing them with spinnerbaits and frogs but I haven't seen it and what I'm doing is working. I pretty much fish one lake though. Could be different where you are.

You will catch a fish on soft plastics, it's just a matter of dialing in presentation.

Good luck.

[PECo]

I agree with Mike, although a soft plastic frog retrieved over a weedbed, or a weightless soft plastic fluke or shad twitched slowly over a weedbed (think "dying fish") works, too. In full sun, cast your lure into every shady spot that you can find. A spinnerbait might work better on a cloudy day or in the shade of a well defined weedline.
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