Ice’n in the Rain

Well,

I could have gone out on Friday when the weather was nice enough to be a spring day…..

But when the weather called for cloudy, rainy weather… The thoughts of the water flowing down the hole and the pan fish waiting just under the ice waiting for a meal gets this Ice Dawg excited !!

My partner Duke M and I met up at the boat landing about 7am and I loaded up the XT900 Full Thermal Otter and I was excited to be able to jump in with Duke as he had the Polaris Ranger with the windshield and cab top..

The Ambro Slough area has some fantastic back waters area that hold the full gambit of fish species…. Big Mo, Little Mo, Spring Lake, Fennimore Cut and Tilmont…

Now comes the reality of the fishing… It Was Tough

The Marcum told us that there were several fish in each area we fished, but they just didn’t want to commit..

We had many 9″ crappies… This area in the next couple of years is going to put out a great population of 12″ plus Crappies, that is very encouraging..

There is a HUGE abundance of LM Bassin this area…you can always tel when billy bass in at your hole… they come in and suck the bait in ever so slowly.. and when you raise your rod the spring bobber stays put and there is some serious weight on the end of the rod…

The Gills… there is not as many 8″ gills here as there has been in the past… I think the decline will turn around if we get a better river stage over the winter months several years in a row..

There is some fantastic Perch action through out the surrounding pools.. Limits of double digit fish are very common…

I had a great day one the ice in the rain… Duke.. it’s always a pleasure !!

till next time !!!

Great report Dave. I’m hoping to get out today if I can find a time where it isn’t pouring down rain.

I don’t feel bad after my day now. Found fish but they were tip lipped on Lake Onalaska. The fish I did manage to coax onto a hook were on the smaller size. Hopefully the rain stops here this afternoon

Dave, how much ice did ya have? Good job on staying on the fish!!

We had a good 12″ to 14″ of ice every where we drilled holes..

We never did drill holes in the Ambro Slough… and the mouth of Mill Coulee creek was wide open..

My son-in-law & I were out for about 3 hours yesterday. Lots of bumps, but only one perch caught. We were sitting in about 4″ of water under the slush but on top of the 18″ of ice. When the perch popped out of the hole, he jumped off the hook, and swam under the shack & out into the real world. Before we could get up, it came back in. (What else could it do? It was raining outside!) we were the only fishermen out on this ice. We did see two shacks side by side on the way home. Interesting day!

Dave, I had the same idea. On Saturday the bite was pretty tough. We tried for crappies and gills with very little success. I hope you tried again Sunday. The fish were very cooperative today.

That figures