I’ve had the luxury of being on the ice for 4 straight days on pool 8. Sunday I fished with Cody Croteau (fishbitemyhook) and his brother Jake at an area community hole. Stepping onto 4-5″ of ice and a short walk out over some brush put us on a hot bite in 17-20 ft of water. Bluegills loaded up the water column in the bottom 10 feet, while crappies would roll through at 6-10 feet below the ice. Though I recognized that I could be catching fish after fish by using live bait and smaller lures, I still chose to employ a 1/8 oz jigging spoon to do my dirty work and the results were good 
Using an agressive presentation with no bait added to the trebel, you catch only the most agressive fish from the school, and I’ve found that often times they are the biggest fish too. When targeting the crappies, I would start my spoon at 5 feet and slowly wiggle it down to about 12 feet. On a fairly consistant basis, marks would appear below my spoon shortly before whacking the snot out of it! The biggest ones were in that 11 to 11-1/2″ range with one brute going 12-1/2″ The next two days were more of the same, only I didn’t keep any fish. Justin and I played catch and release with easily 15-20 keeper panfish each on Monday, with a bonus perch bite coming into play later in the outing. We found those fish relating to a flat on the edge of deep water. We were actually catching the fish out of less than 3 feet of water on top of the flat, and if you missed a fish, your spoon would fly out of the hole! 
Though the perch were abundant on this area, only a few of them were of decent size (pictured below). Another highlight of the Sun., Mon., Tues. series of outings was the bass action! All you needed to do to hook up with a feisty bass was to drop the spoon to the bottom and give a couple of quick jigs. I caught my biggest bass of the outings, however, on a perch colored lindy darter. I was getting fewer bites on that bait when targeting the bass, but the ones I was getting were typically bigger. The biggest largemouth I caught was a solid 18″er.
Last night and today I found myself chasing a bit of a different bite. I was hoping to get on some saugers and walleyes last night after work, but was unsure of what the ice conditions would be like in the area of interest. A buddy and I headed out and checked the ice, finding a good 3 inches covering the area of interest, with a visible layer of 1.5 inch ice just yards away. The walleyes and saugers didn’t cooperate, but a few nice perch did. Those fish were just enough to make up my mind where to go today, on my day off from work 
I spent about 4 hours out there today and found the perch to still be hanging out where they left off last night in 22 feet of water. I used a jigging spoon with a waxie and also caught some on minnow heads. The bite was not fast and furious but the majority of the fish were solid 10 to 11-1/2″ perch. I also caught some dink crappies and a handful of 9″ perch that I let go for another year, but had fun icing 9 good eaters for the pan Overall, fishing on pool 8 has been good, and it’s only going to get better for me as the year progresses. The warm weather is keeping ice from forming in a lot of really good areas, but remember it also means that much more time that the anglers can’t access those areas. When I can get on the ice at my “Plan A” Locations, i expect the bite to be absolutely lights out!! 
big ol’ suspending crappies
wish i had some ice around here to fish on instead of driving 4 hours north to fish but i always enjoy a trip up to the cabin 
Still open water fishing on the mississippi up here. Bites been unbelievable so I’m not too disappointed to not be on the ice yet. Lakes around here are good to go for the most part but I’m not ready yet.
I just stayed back in the distance away from you and Tom 
