With an abundance of open water on the river, I decided it was time to take the boat out. Many other people shared the river with me today, as there were many cars in the parking lot at 7th street boat landing. My main target was going to be bass for the day, but after boating around with the aqua vu and not seeing anything but one lone largemouth, I decided to try and look for walkable ice in backwater bays that I could access with my boat. It didn’t take long to find a deep bay with 4″ of ice on it. The shoreline was busted up, but I was able to get on the ice using my boat by driving up on it, and spudding my way out from there. The ice was pretty decent and the fishing was great. I caught a ton of bluegills and crappies in this bay. Granted, most were a little smaller than I generally like to keep, but the keepers i did catch were bulls. I caught a few bluegills pushing 9″ and several in the 8-8-1/2 range. only one crappie that was keeper sized, and one that got off at the hole that was substantially bigger. I was overall pleased with the first spot and happy because I had never before ice fished this bay before. I did some boating up river and came to the next bay. this bay is just off the channel and Pretty large, again with some good depth between 10-15 feet. I noticed a “channel” in the ice where somebody must have broken through earlier in the winter with their boat. I started working my way through busting some ice with my boat, but then the boat just rode right up high on top of the ice and wouldn’t break through no matter how hard I tried. I decided it was time to get out and I found the ice to be 6″ thick in this spot!! 
I poked a few holes and caught 1 more 9″ gill, a small gill and a small crappie. This was in about 10 minutes and the sun was down and it was time to head back to the landing. I think I will be heading back to this bay tomorrow and I’ll have an update on how I do. Many of the other boaters out where doing the same thing as I, if not walleye fishing. I talked to some guys at the boat landing that said fishing had been real good where they were all week, and it was OK today. They had some nice bluegills for being just an “OK” day. I’ll have to check that out sometime..
The above pic is what it looked like with my boat up on the ice. It sure was an awkward feeling, cruising the backwaters and the main channel with no ice chunks or sheets to behold. It was wide open everywhere, including swift creek (north gravel pits) behind the hospital. that is where I saw the only bass of the day.
good fishin’
Cade
