so??

anyone braving the cold weather? we’ve been catching a bunch of 8″ eyes lately.

ware at

I was out yesterday, going tomorrow before work, and then I’m off Friday for the rest of the weekend, plan on spending it all on the ice, think I’m going to be up by Ft. Dodge, anyone been to Brushy?

Sean,

It’s been real slow at Brushy . I think there is a tourny there this weekend also. Put on by the Fire Dept.

Good luck where ever you end up fishin.
Frank

Guess I’ll leave Brushy alone. My buddy’s got a milk run of farm ponds around his folks’ place at Livermore, I was just thinking about branching out if the bite was slow.

I was hoping for a more upbeat report than that. If you are getting 8″ eyes the normal mortal wouldn’t be catching a thing. I stayed indoors last weekend and performed my manly duties and honeydoo’s so I have a bank of time logged for this w/e. I’ll be trying it somewhere tomorrow. Does anybody fish Coralville should be plenty of ice on that by now. Would be nice to hit a pile of those few and far between mongo crappie I get in the Spring there…I already had my fill of McBride gills, dink walleye and paper thin Crappies. Time to go scouting.

‘Rug, you have a PM

I’ve been out a handful o’ times the last few weeks. Best luck (and what I have been hearing from other ice men) has been on private farm ponds and out of the way places. You got to wage the battle on the “dark side”!

Gianni and I hit the Mac last Saturday morning in that insane -40 degree windchill and got 2 typical Macbride runts. I know there are bigger ones in there, shoot, my son nailed a fat 15″ plus speck out of there a couple of springs ago in May. We used GPS to locate an out of the way brushpile in the north arm, we marked fish, but it was SLOW.

From there we went to a private pond where he had permission that doesn’t really exist and nailed a pile of fish, mostly chunky largemouths and one really nice bull gill. We tossed them all back since this fairy-tale pond is really small and we did not want to take out that good breeding stock-but it was a fun time on some quality fish. I was back inside slurping a hot bowl of soup by noon last Saturday.

As I posted on I/O, my 5 year old middle son Dominic joined me this afternoon on the highway 13 borrow pit near the treatment plant. The wind trajectory kept the odor factor reasonable. About 4pm, the vex lit up with fish and the little guy had a lot of fun catching tons of ‘gills. Most of these were really small, with a more decent one mixed in here and there, but nothing that I would call a real bull gill. We quit at 5:30 since he was wanting to head home for some hot chocolate and we didn’t wanna urine momma off being late for supper , but the bite was going strong.

Ice was well over 12″ out there.

If I don’t hack a lung first , I plan to hit some “new” spots too this weekend. I am thinking of trying Wapsi backwaters, Delhi, Cedar River backwaters, and some small public ponds/borrow pits that get little press time. Let me know if you want to hang out.