Will likely be fishing Coralville Saturday morning. Planning on doing some slip-bobber fishing for crappies, maybe break for a while and look for a few bass as well.
Since it’s been, oh, a couple years since anyone’s put up a Coralville report, thought I’d ask if anyone’s been out.
I was fishing above the Macbride ramp on Coralville a week or so ago. I got a couple of crappies, and that was all. The water levels were really low before the rain, but I would think it has come up a bit.
Not heard much recently, John. They have to be active by now, though. I think we ought to try the rock walls in some of the coves. I have heard rumors about the storied monster slabs along the rock walls… 
Other than that, we can look for brush along drop-offs. I’m gonna pick up some little tube jigs either tomorrow or Friday over my lunch hour in preparation for the excursion.
The weekly IADNR fishing report had nothing to say about C’ville…zippo. However, there were mixed reports of crappie activity throughout the state. I think we might have to work to find ’em, but once we do, we should do OK.
Any luck today at Coralville. I fished below the dam and caught some nice ones from 1:00 to 3:30 today. Minnows and jigs is what they were caught on..
Fishing was L-O-U-S-Y.
Launched at Mehaffee, first time with the boat out this year (wanted to shake it down before going to the river at the end of the month). Took a while to get her going, but once she was running and the smoke cleared, we looked to be in pretty good shape.
Since I’ve fished the North and for the last few years with limited success, we decided we’d check out the lower half. Headed down looking for a cove that we’d spotted on the map, but turned that last corner, saw the spillway, and realized that we’d gone too far. Oh well, pulled into the cove where the marina is, deployed the electric motor, and we were off & running.
The plan was to fish minnows under slip-bobbers and nail a few crappies. We stuck it out there by the marina, covering the point from the mouth of the cove to about halfway back. Stayed for about an hour, with some light rain coming and going. No fish. Fishfinder was lit up, fish suspended from 5-10 ft, what are these things??? Whatever they were, they weren’t eating minnows under slip bobbers.
So it’s back to that cove that we were looking for in the first place… Ahh, there it was, drove right past it (low water had me confused, I guess). Pulled in there, should’ve been nearly perfect with 2-5 ft of water and brush-piles coming out of our ears with rock shoreline right behind. We continued our slip-bobber extravaganza with no success. I pitched a plastic worm for a few casts, but couldn’t talk a bass into biting either. We’d marked fish on the way in, maybe they’re staging??? Moved out there an jigged deep with minnows, but no fish there either.
We’d set a deadline that by 9:30, if we hadn’t boated a fish, we were heading for MacBride. Well, it was actually about 9:45 when we fired the motor up to head back, but we were resolute and got out of that mudhole.
Water level: Low (very low)
Water temp: 55-58 (surface)
Water Clarity: 3-4 inches (average for C’ville)
Contact: Turkeys, deer, honkers (not a single fish)
Headed over to the sailboat ramp at MacBride. Moved out into the old creek channel and marked some cover and fish. Jigged, drifted, slow-trolled, and did everything we could to get one to bite, but nothing came of it. Headed over to the power lines and did some lindy-rigging with floaters and minnows, couldn’t come up with anything but a couple of snags. Noon came, and we just got out of there and headed for home.
Water temp: 59 (surface)
Water clarity: 3-4 ft
Contact: a hundred other boats
Not sure what we should’ve done different, other than maybe switching to carp fishing. 
Skunkorama. 
We’ll try the evening bite over at Macbride on of these days soon. 
I’ve had the best luck on specks in that magic last 2 hours of daylight.
It was a bummer yesterday, for sure. Don’t know what we could have done different. 
Lots of boats working the Mac. I don’t recall seeing anyone pulling anything in over there, either. There is a thread over on I/O going on about ‘eyes near the lines after dark. We might need to see if there is a pattern there.
For all the returns on the graph, we should have more than 4 hits all morning…
Oh well, it was nice to get out. After the week
I have had at work, it was pure therapy. 
Thanks for sharing your boat with me, dude. We’ll do it again soon. Hopefully, the fish will be more cooperative. 
Thanks for the detailed report on conditions. Sorry it didnt work out for you, but sometimes you can learn as much from catching nothing and next time spank them.
Before this morning, the crappie bite on Macbride has shut off by eight in the morning, and not turned on again until about 7:00 p.m. I’ve gotten out at six in the morning, fished til nine or ten (staying after eight a.m. has always been a waste of time this spring), loaded the boat up, and came back at six that evening. This is what I am doing today, too.
This morning was the first time in five trips to Macbride in the last week where I didn’t get any crappies. The surface temps were sixty this morning, so they may be moving shallow for the spawn.
Those rock piles and points near the ‘lines like to eat rigs. I lost a lindy rig and a blue ring worm w/jig over there yesterday.
I was hoping to get out there this evening with my son, but the lawn needed mowed like now, so I had to get ‘er done. 
Theoretically, I should have got ‘er done early enough to get out on the lake tonight, but I don’t think John Deere makes an implement that weighs less than 300#! I had to get the snow thrower off and get the belly deck on my tractor; needless to say it took a little longer than I expected. I will say this much, this newer system on my 2210 is light years faster to take on/off than my old 317.
I might try it tomorrow evening, if work lets me out on parole at 4:30pm. Does anyone know if the BP in Solon is selling minnows yet? Last spring and summer, they stocked minnows. It was a convenient place to stop if you ride on route 1 to get to Loch MacBride.
The liars that made my MacBride hotspots laminated fishing map (that’s a mouthful! 
) talk about the best fishing following an early/late/night-time regime.
I am new to Iowa, so I lack the years on the water that some of you have, but I know last year, my best catches on the Mac were an hour on either side of sunset and outright night-time. My best daytime fishing forays at the Mac yielded only what appeared to be stunted largemouth and kentucky bass (<12 “) and an occasional panfish. Stringers got heavy for me only late in the day…
The bite on Macbride is usually best right around sunset…except when it isn’t. Yesterday, I went back out at 5:30 p.m., and by 6:30 I had four 9″-10″ crappie in the basket, and had released a couple smaller ones. Then, from 6:30 to sunset just before eight, I only got one more fish. I picked these up in the creek channel on the north arm. That area seems to be a staging area for pre-spawn crappies. The last two springs, once the spawn got under way, I couldn’t find anything in the creek channel. It should be very close to that time now–the surface temps were sixty-two degrees yesterday evening.
Vike:
You might remember some of my posts on I/O last year…I had good luck in the immediate area of that channel (from just out the sailboat ramp to the bluff) from about now til mid-May. Best luck was in the evening. As I remember, we “wind trolled” in 8-18′ of water. Two 1/16 oz jigs each tipped with a minnow worked best. The baits were suspended, just trailing out the back of the boat. Fish would be suspended in the column, according to the graph. I got that rig from a kindly gentleman that showed me how he was catching them, and also pointed me to the south edge of the north arm channel. I focused on brush piles initially, but after my sucess in the north arm channel, I pretty much abandoned the brush piles until the ice season.
Decisions, Decisions… I’ve got until next Sun off and am heading Three &
a half hours from here to SW Iowa at Three mile lake. It’s an annual thing ya know?
In a lot of ways I think if I just concentrated on the morning & Evening at the Mac, then
it would be a lot easier, and cheaper too 
Wish me luck that it don’t rain the entire time Good fishing to you all…
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