Tips come after catching PB ice-fishing crappie

Ice fishing season brings some of the best eating fish in part because of the cold water.

Take the 13-inch crappie that Arden Katz caught Saturday from the T Channel on the Fox Chain O'Lakes. There's a good big reason it's pictured on newspaper on a cutting board.

"I never caught one that big through the ice and I've been fishing there 40 years," he said.

He caught it on a glow Widowbread Widow Maker Lures tungsten jig and a wax worm. He jigs all the way down from the ice to the bottom.

"The crappies were all right under the ice," he said.

Katz drilled a plethora of holes, 20 on Saturday, then hole hopped, catching fish from half the holes. He also uses a 3- to 4-foot fluorocarbon leader.

"I think I catch a lot more fish because of that," he said.

FOTW, the celebration of big fish and their stories (the stories matter) around Chicago fishing, runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times.

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