i fished stoddard again today for about 6 hours and had a good time. i got on the ice at about 9 with my friend carson, and we found the gills to be chomping, but running way smaller than they were yesterday. I caught one small i mean barely even a keeper, sized fish and quite a few small gills, and finally carson caught a couple I caught another perch that was barely a keeper itself and then it was all 5-6 inch gills for about an hour. Carson had to leave at about 11:30 and i decided to stay longer and see what happened. The fish shut off soon after carson had left and i hoofed it way way out by the back of “the box” (those of you that know stoddard probably know what im talking about) and i drilled 2 holes using my spud 
there weren’t very many holes around other than ones with a lot of ice on them, so i just toughed it out and drilled through the 8-9″ that was there with my spud. I got through in only about 20 seconds but it was serious work. i caught one small gill there and then i had to go back to where i started. Back to the smaller sized gills again, but finally the bigger ones came in from nowhere. they started showing up aggressively on the Lx-3 and finally i caught a nice 8ish inch gill.I settled in and started catching fish after fish, and caught several keeper fish, including 1 at about 9″ and 2 or 3 others that were at least 8-1/2. I would venture a guess to say that if i was keeping fish today, i could have kept about 10, but i would have really had to work for them. It was a good time none the less whether they were big or not. To those of you that are going out, bring plenty of bait. They wouldn’t take a waxie that was beet up so i constently had to change until i finally ran out. spikes were not working.
good luck out there….I know some of you guys are having a great time below the dams, but im trying to hold on to what ice we have left. Im with bret on this one, bring back my ice 
January 15, 2006 at 10:12 pm
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