Time to get out of town...

This year has been a real struggle to ice quality fish. Waconia has been slow, plus, one of my favorite little lakes close by my home has been taken over by dink perch! Other outings have been relatively fruitless. Yeah, sure, there are pathetic little fish I could take pics of and post, but why bother, really!

Fortunately I will have some relief from the ice-fishing blues, because friday I hit the road for 3-day trip to Grand Rapids. Andy will be driving seperately, will fish with me friday and half of saturday before he returns. I'll stick around through sunday.

What can I expect? That's a tough call. Weather is forcast to be seasonably warm, with daytime highs around the freezing mark. But as I understand there might be some good 'ol high pressure lurking, which will make the bite a bit unpredictable. Hopefully I'll be able to catch some quality bluegills and crappies, and if things stabilize, I could get onto a really good panfish bite. I look forward to trying my new Ice-Stopper fairy jigs in glow red and the Lindy Flying Rattler jigging spoon. Weather will definitely favor outside fishing adventure.

I'll have my camera ready to go, so look forward to pictures and my report upon my return.

Casey

friday report

I had the day off work friday so I headed to a small metro area lake that supposedly had some big gills in it. It was snowing lightly and the temps were in the upper twenties, so it was pleasant fishing weather. I dragged my stuff out there and drilled a bunch of holes covering deep to shallow. I found active gills in every hole, and they were easy to catch, the only problem was the size. Small, potato chip sunnies no bigger than the hand.




Well, after a couple hours of that game I decided to head to Waconia to see if I could vindicate my last three outings there. I tried a couple different spots, fishing in the weeds, without anything to show for it. So I decided to head to the Pillsbury Reef area, an area I had struggled in this year but had caught some quality panfish there last year. I found an area with some deep weeds and sure enough found some active bluegills. They were on the bottom, mixed in with the weeds, but were eager to bite my offering of an orange Berkley Fish Fry. It was a bit slow at first, but as it got closer to dusk they became much more active. I kept a couple close to the nine inch mark.

After the gills shut down, I decided to switch gears and try for crappies. I put on a red Glow Demon tipped with a Gulp! waxie; I managed a couple crappies this way. They were slow, coming off the bottom slowly sliding up to my offering. Here's one at 10.5".

not much happening...

Since returning from Grand Rapids I have nothing noteworthy to report. Fishing has been very tough for me the last four or five outings, trying some new spots in the TC metro area, with only a few embarassingly small panfish.

Coming up: I am looking forward to a two day panfish trip to Ottertail county at the end of February, and then there is the late ice period in March when the bite should pick up. Between now and then I'll probably spend most of my time on local lakes trying to locate a decent bite.

GRAND RAPIDS REPORT

I recently returned from Grand Rapids after four days of fishing for pannies, mostly targeting giant bluegills. Me and Andy stayed in a really nice clean resort cabin (Wildwood Resort) on Bass lake on thursday and friday ahead of the rest of the crowd...they arrived on saturday morning. We did all of our fishing on Bass lake.

We knew we were in for very cold weather for the first three days with temp highs barely getting above zero. It turned out that the first day we had the best fishing with overcast conditions. I also did really well on day two, but Andy didn't fare as well. Day three high pressure really affected the bite for me (Andy did better than me). And by day four the weather was actually back to respectable limits and found the fish a bit more cooperative.

We caught most of our fish in around 20 FOW. All in all I caught a few big gills close to the ten inch mark. I also registered a tie for my personal best bluegill that measured 10.5" We also found occasional slab crappies roaming the basin. I had the best luck on a Little Atom Atomic Stealth jig tipped with either Gulp! Alive waxies in red or spikes. Andy was hammering fish on a Fiskas jig with hooks coming out of either end and loaded with a couple spikes. Here's a bunch of pictures I took, so enjoy!

Andy nabs a big gill

Mike Thompson with some slabs!

Another beauty for Andy

Good crappie action for Bass lake

Here's my 10.5" bluegill. I wish I had taken more pictures.

Grand Rapids bound!

I'm leaving this morning for a four day fishing trip to Grand Rapids. Me and Andy are heading up today (It's 4:14am now) with a group of about 12 to meet us up there on saturday morning. I expect less than favorable conditions today and tomorrow with highs expected just above zero with some wind forcast for today. We might try some different lakes besides Bass. I really want to give Little Bowstring a shot. My main focus will be panfish, especially big bluegills, but might try to ice some walleyes too.

Anyway, look for my report and pictures upon my return early next week.

A couple quick reports

I visited the lake from my last report with Andy, hoping to cash in on some nice panfish once again, but this time the fish were very NEGATIVE! Very few fish caught, including the only keeper of the day, a nice bluegill over 8 inches. Beautiful fish.

I had to leave just at prime time, just as the sun was going down, in order to make it to a New Year's party. The panfish in that lake seem to be in that negative winter pattern and don't see myself going back there for quite some time. Amazing how fish patterns can change in a week.

This morning I scouted a local lake I have fished many times before. I caught a few keeper crappies, nothing huge, and lot's of small bluegills and lot's of dink perch. This lake is never the same year after year. Where you catch 'em one year, the next they are not there. And now there are tons of small dink gills and perch in spots where there were decent gills before minus the perch, probably in response to a huge LM bass die-off last winter. I couldn't find a single gill over 8"... I know they're in there though. I found the fish pretty aggressive in broad daylight...usually they are tight lipped during the day. Weird!

12-28 ice fishing

Ice fishing if finally here! Actually I already went on a two day ice fishing trip to Big Sandy and another lake 3 weeks ago. That's the good news. The bad news is that I thought I had fresh batteries for my camera but discovered at the worst possible time that my charger didn't work, so my batteries were dead and I had to get another charger. Well, now I got my fresh batteries and am ready to go!

Big Sandy and the other lake produced a few nice fish, Big Sandy I caught some slab crappies, although it was a finesse situation and had to really work for them. On lake x the fish were even more tight lipped, but managed some crappies and a few gills. Others in our party fared better than me with a 10" gill and 13.5" crappie.

Let's fast forward to yesterday. I went to a metro area lake teamed up with Mike Thompson, hoping to ice some nice panfish. The weather was in the 20's, the lake had snow with a layer of slush under it, winds were light...a very delightful day to be on the ice. We drilled quite a few holes and we could not find any fish. I started drilling closer to the shore before I started connecting with the crappies, bluegills not far behind. They were fairly aggressive and liked my offering of Gulp! Minnow Fry. In fact, I didn't catch anything else on any other offerings, the Minnow Fry killed 'em! I ended up taking home a limit of crappies and about 10 gills although I certainly caught more than that. There are some bruiser gills in that lake....I caught a couple around 9".

sweet crappie in the hole...

a decent fish...

and another...

caught this little bass too...

Biggest crappie of the day around 11"