A friend of mine suggested that people who go ice fishing now, in the last days of February around Lansing, should wear a life preserver. With that in mind, I will share information about what may have been my last ice fishing trip of the year, at least near DeWitt, which was to Park Lake near Bath.
On my previous 2016 trip to Park Lake, I only caught some small blue gills. In mid-February, I went back to Park Lake and wound up over a number of larger fish. The fish we were seeing were all at around 8 to 10 feet deep toward the western end of the lake, and they seemed to be very active. One thing I did notice is that usually crappie suspend over the gills, but this time, the blue gills were suspended over the crappie. The crappie were more bottom-oriented. Although the fish appeared active, any time I dropped down a spoon, the fish would scatter, so I downsized my presentation to a small tungsten jig tipped with three red spikes. Because the fish were so active, I would jig to call them in, and then pull the jig about a foot over them and wait for them to race up and bite.
Throughout the day, I caught a number hand-sized gills and a nice, 11-inch crappie.
It's possible there still might be ice fishing locally this winter, but time is starting to run out. I often do a northern Michigan ice fishing trip in March, but we'll see if it's safe, or if I'd be on thin ice!
