Maybe 10 years ago a friend and I did a walk around at a local ice fishing hot spot one nice day. No auger, a few jigs/plastics, and no locator....just going from hole to hole that were open and not being fished. There were maybe 75 anglers there and it was one of those days where nothing but dink perch and small sunnies were being caught. I used a small jigging demon with a pink micro nuggie on it. My buddy the same but a white micro.
We literally just went from hole to hole and it didn't seem to matter what the water depth was as the crappies were laying about 14" under the ice, and I suspect they were pecking small insects off the bottom of the ice cap. Nobody was marking these fish because they were so high up in the water column. We just dropped the jig down and gave it a second to settle at about 12" under the ice and then twitched it to give that tail a little wiggle and POW. We were just playtime fishing, keeping nothing, and ended up catching maybe 100 crappies in the 12 to 14 inch range just wandering between people sitting on buckets doing nothing. Some asked what we were using and we'd show them. None had so much as a jigging spoon let alone a nuggie of any denomination....they were all stuck on bait! We didn't use corks and I don't think either of us fished more than the first 6 feet of line on the rods. lol Its was hilarious to walk up to a hole and smile at a guy sitting 8 feet away that hadn't seen a fish for twenty minutes then drop a jig in and pop a crappie in ten seconds....and then put the fish back down the hole.
Gotta love those small plastics and crappies. They fit together like a well designed shoe on a foot. I no longer do much ice fishing but I do make a ton of Do-Its Wax Wigglers, Ice Ticklers, Nano Fry, and Ice Pick baits for people wanting to scale down in bait size. I make nothing on the order of the bait you make nor the nuggie but I could go nuts with a mold like yours. lol I still take this bag of nuggies to the docks in the fall to fish crappies and they generally see some action each trip. They're a dynamite bait. Happy to see you making them.
