Yuba Reservoir 9/4 - Ice Tactics Pay Off!

[joatmon]

I used nightcrawlers with some success, but things really heated up for the wipers when I switched to mussels.



Yuba is close to home so this would be a good trip for us.
You said you were using mussels.  If you would please share a bit about where or how or what kind.
I'm totally in the dark about em.

I bought the frozen mussels at Walmart (Sam's Choice), cooked but still in the shell (see photo).  I just took them out of the bag one at a time as needed and dipped them in the water until thawed enough to get the mussel out of the shell.  Since I had on a couple of small ice jigs, I had to be creative.  The first couple I just hooked through the tongue (small darker meat inside the mussel) and let it hang below my jig.  Basically just donated those first few to the wipers.  Then I made an adjustment to hook through the tongue of the mussel, then took a half hitch around the rest of the mussel to keep it hanging above the jig.  This caused a few deeper hooksets on aggressive bites, but still in the mouth and not in the gills or throat or tongue.  I had to use forceps to release about half of the wipers caught on mussels this way.  I have tried hooking mussels on with small rubber bands and magic thread the one other time I went wiper fishing, but had neither of those with me at Yuba.