Ice Bluegills... on Pepperoni

I like pepperoni. I like it enough that I can sit down and eat a foot long sausage without any concern of the distraction to my digestive tract that is guaranteed by eating that much spicy, cured meat. This should be obvious, but some of you may not be in the know... that packaged, sliced stuff you can get at the grocery store that's already the right shape and size to be put on a pizza. That's not real pepperoni. It isn't even close. But the other day I opened up a drawer in the fridge and saw a package of that not-quite-good-enough-pepperoni and had a though.

I've been having a hell of a time catching bluegills through the ice. I've seen them come up to a hair jig, or come up to a tungsten jig with a tiny scented soft plastic, and just not touch it. No matter how I worked it (or didn't) they were defiant. Uncharacteristically obnoxious, really. Bluegills are supposed to be an instant gratification fish and here I am completely failing to catch them.

The hair and feather jigs didn't work on their own. That was no surprise. A tungsten jig with a soft plastic getting snubbed baffled me. But maybe that little bit of of saltiness in the plastics was not enough to tempt the extremely cold, lazy bluegills. I was not in the mood to go out and get wax worms or spikes, which I new would work. What I wanted was something a bit creative, and those little slices of crappy pepperoni fit the bill for me. Cut into thin strips they would fit on a jig really well, give off tons of scent, and provide a piece of real meat for the gills to chomp down on.

I broke fresh holes on a shallow marshy pond six or seven miles from home, and low and behold, the pepperoni worked. Not only as a tip for a tungsten jig, but as a trailer on a marabou jig as well. After three years of halfhearted attempts and three weeks of really serious effort, I caught just under 40 bluegills through the ice. Now I need to figure out perch and crappies. Shouldn't be too hard.