Mantua 2/20

[Springbuck1]

  Most of the fish would come up to the lure suck it in and quickly spit it out. The perch, blue Gill ,and bass all did this.  As the mourning went on the bite was slower and more subtle. A catfish swam past my bait and kissed the camera.  A trout came and aggressively went after the lure and missed it twice before moving on.
 

This!!! Exactly this!  Mantua bluegills can be SO FUSSY! But so can other fish, sometimes.

When I first started icefishing, I made my biggest breakthrough watching underwater ice camera panfish on YouTube, and I preach this all the time.  Even with very sensitive bite detectors, a lot of time the tiny "tick" I see on a spring-bobber is the fish spitting it out! Or, I see a tap, "hover-hand" the rod, and try the hookset at the next tiny clue, but miss. That's him spitting it out.  I've seen video of multiple bluegills playing with a small jighead, tasting it over and over, without really moving it more tan a half inch any direction. 

 Often as not, I get nearly skunked on Mantua after the first few weeks of ice, but I also have good days sometimes.  Listen to real experts before me, but I feel like it does help to go way down in jig size (tiny tungstens), use baby-hair fine line, show up real early in the morning, use tiny, wiggly soft plastics (I like a size 14 nuclear ant, but I just mean the kind that shiver underwater when the breeze moves your line), jig "small" not bouncy, and use weird techniques and lures the fish may not have seen.,like flashers and tiny drop-shots, etc.  Waxies are good, but I take spikes, and little tiny mealworms, too.  I've been told to keep quiet, but I still like to move to find fish. 

Good luck!