Ice Fishing Bait and Lures

Ice fishing lures and bait are essential components of a successful frozen water angling experience. Enhance your ice fishing gear with teardrop jigs for a horizontal presentation or banana jigs offering a vertical approach in the water column. Experiment with live bait options like wax worms, maggots, spikes, wigglers, or minnows, employing either a static or jigging technique to entice fish.

Ice Fishing Lures

For your small ice fishing lures, add some jigs and flies to your ice fishing gear. Try teardrop jigs with horizontal presentation (the hook tip points horizontally in the water column while fishing) or banana jigs with a vertical presentation (the hook tip points vertically in the water column while ice fishing).

Ice Fishing Bait

For ice fishing live bait, try wax worms (bee moth larva), maggots, spikes (fly larvae), wigglers (mayfly larvae) or minnows. You can drop your bait and leave it alone, or you can slowly jig to attract the fish.

Ice fishing jigging also works with artificial ice fishing bait. If you do not want to use live bait, try plastic ice fishing lures. Plastic ice fishing lures come in a variety of colors and shapes and are most often made to resemble worms.

For bigger fish, a larger hook with larger live bait like minnows, smelt, salmon eggs or spawn bags is frequently used. If you plan to jig with live bait, spawn bags or salmon eggs are among the best ice fishing lures.

Watch our next video and learn about the different types of ice fishing lures and ice fishing bait you can you for a successful fishing trip.