IA. Lakes, From FTR Post

Hey TTrigger, at Palo try just outside the swimming area rope. With a #8 or smaller hook, use a small red or green bead above the hook and tip with a wax worm or piece of crawler. Use just enough weight to maintain bottom contact while drifting. This is a late May through June pattern that has worked for several years. Also don’t forget Hawthorne, you can almost always catch some gills or crappies especially in the spring. Union Grove is tougher to hit right but the fish are better, plus the possibility of getting some nice saugeye. All three are crowded and are best hit morning and evening. The best solution is of course to head for the river. Good Luck……B

Another Idea you may want to try is to fish the lake at night. This will give you a good idea of where the fish are and to what types of structure they are relating too. After finding these fish go out during the day and try looking for some key structure breaks close to where you were fishing at night. If the water you are fishing is heavily pressured with boat traffic these fish might simply be hanging out a little further deeper or adjacent to these breaks from where you caught them at night.

Also during the day try some three ways, or like Big B said to try drifting with some lighter jigs. These are slower presentations which just might be what it takes to get them going. Especially if these fish are very pressured from boat traffic and other fisherman.

Hope this helps

Good Luck

Jim L

My daughter and I hit Palo today, and believe me… there was plenty of elbow room. The ice around the edges was as unsafe as I could possibly imagine, with open water in the center of the lake.

Plenty of ice where we were, with lots of fish on the flasher. None of them were very interested, though. Guess that’s what you get for going ice fishing on a sunny, 70° day. Look like the coming week will have some better fishing weather.