Central Iowa Panfish

Central and southern Iowa probably don’t get their due when it come to the panfish oportunites. Badger Lake has been putting out large numbers and good quality bluegills all winter, Big Creek is back on the right track, 12 Mile, 3 Mile, West Lake, and Aquabi are all really good bluegill Lakes.

I fished Aquabi yesterday and did ok. I caught 7 really nice gills, but they were tough. I fished about 20 holes and chased them up and down the vexilar. 9 out of 10 would race out of the cone by the time the jig would get there. That’s part of the fun though, trying to figure out what will fool them and put a few fish on the ice.

I hit the ice with my big gill neccessities. A $2 southbend extra light noodle rod with 2lb test line, a hand auger, a bucket to sit on, the trusty Vexilar, a few waxies, an assortment of Marmuska Jigs and several different colors of plastic tails. The first two fish came on a deadstick and 2 waxies, the rest on the Marmuska and either a pink or green straight tail.

The ice– It’s good once you get on. With the large amount of snow and the quick melt the edges are getting soft and there are even some holes where there is a flow of run off. We are supposed to get rain this weekend, which is going to be really tough on the edges.

Welcome to IDA stix. Thanks for the great report, too! The reason you can’t post the zip file is that is just a compressed file – but it’s not an “image” file. you need to open you’re file in photoshop or something similar and just reduce the size (quality) of the photo. Or, here’s an easy way to do it.

1)Get the image on your screen and hit the “print screen” button.
2) open the program PAINT by going to programs>accessories>paint
3) click edit > paste – you should see your whole screen w/ the picture there too
4) click any of the tools and then the rectangle marqee tool (dashed square) and draw a box around your image (just the picture) and hit Edit>Copy
5) Go to File > New and then paste the image in and save it as a jpeg by File > Save as (put in whatever filename you want and choose jpeg from the file type menu)

Hope this helps. It’s really a lot easier than it sounds and a quick tool to have on the computer. I use this all the time.

Andy

You’ve got to also shrink the white background in paint to fit your image – then save it.

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Marmuska and either a pink or green straight tail.

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So you actually slip a plastic tail to the hook of your Marmooska’s? If so, that is interesting and something I just may have to try The Marmooska’s are usually my go to bait when the day calls for downsizing, but I usually tip with a waxie. The last few days I have been out I have been doing between very well and decent with no bait for crappies

3″ of rain and 12″ of ice has made it tough in Northern Ia. But the Ice is still good.