Successful road trip

Took a little road trip today got a late start because the guy bringing the boat to get us to the ice we wanted to fish decided to stay home without calling anyone.

We got on some pretty thin ice at about 8am and started to catch big gills right away. It took about an hour for our first flag which produced a 22 inch bass after that it was flags every fifteen min. We had to run into the nearest bait shop twice to get more shiners. However the fish only took gold shiners. They didn’t touch big chubs or silver shiners. In total we caught 28 bass the biggest being 24 1/4 inches. some nice crappies on minnow tipped tip-ups and countless big gills. My buddy kept his limit of gills and 1 bass for his mother who likes to grill em (all caught by 10am) after that all fish were released. It was really alot of fun trying to be the first to a flag but as I said the ice was thin so if you had even a small jump on the other guys it was all yours.

any pics of the bass? those are hogs

Digital died but my buddy took some with a disposable I’ll be hooking up with him again next weekend and I’ll do my best to get em on here next week.

24 1/4″???

that has to weigh at least 8 lbs… In WI?
If so, Congrats! Thats awesome!

Sounds like you guys had a blast.

Great report Ryan
Sounds like I might need to dig out the tip-ups here soon

Wow, it’s not everyday a guy can catch a 24-1/4″ bass thru the ice! That’s unbelievable!

Wow 24 1/4…you have to post a pic of that…thats a huge bass …congrats

Sounds like ya had a REAL good day guy….
You did’nt miss much here…the lake was pretty dead…real murky water and the fish were not intrested in anything I had to offer
BUT the auger waterfowler sold me worked like a charm!!I was a hole drill’in fool!!
Bass that size are hard to come by……Back when they put in the artifical islands (cannot remember what year that was) in lake Onalaska it seemed that all the bass in that area were pushed to and spread out on the flats just north of schaffer’s…that winter was GREAT bass fish’in!! Caught many 19 – 20 inchers and my buddy iced a 26.5 incher!! Biggest bass I had ever seen…..he released it without a picture(no such thing as digital or phone cameras back then)
Ahhh….the good old days

Cade, It was a big fish but I don’t think it weighed 8lbs. I caught a 25 incher last year on the black river and it weighed out at just under 7lbs. I did leave Wisconsin for the day.

The area we fished was actually quite interesting we crossed a slough that had about 11 feet of water and came to this big bay. The bay had a huge flat in 5′ of water with dense weed cover. Then there was a drop to about 12′ with weeds and some sort of man made structure I am guessing rocks. In the back of the bay there was 20’plus this was along the wood line with lots of brush piles and trees in the water. The bigger bass were caught in 12′ of water right before the drop to the deeper holes. No crowd either but this could have been because of the thin ice. We had lots of rope, extra clothes, and warm vehicles and shacks nearby. I am glad we never had to use the rope.