Today was another fun day on the ice. I’m happy to say that I’ve fished 3 different areas in the last 2 days. 2 of them are places I’ve never ice fished ever, and one is a place that I haven’t been to for a long time. Putting together a good game plan the night before helps devlop successful trips. Today was another one of those. Though the fishing wasn’t too great again for numbers, we caught some nice fish and the average sizes were great as far as panfish go. The first spot had a decent crowd at it, and it was a little different fishing in a crowd for the first time since a couple weeks ago. The action was decent for crappies riding high and bull gills near the bottom, but when the crowd started to increase, the fishing sloped downhill in a hurry. I did manage to ice my biggest Crappie through the ice to date. my Personal best is a 15″er caught a few years ago on bass tackle, but this one takes the spot for a jig stick and on the ice. 
It was just a thick, huge fish, and it was a job to get it through the 6″ ice hole I was fishing! I wasn’t sure how big he was but it hit the tape right at 13-3/4″ long. This fish fell victim to a swedish pimple with a minnow head. That combination is producing the biggest crappies around as of late. Everyone in the crowd was using teardrops and waxies as far as I could tell. I saw some gills pushing 10″ but they just weren’t catching any slabs. We put the smack on several 10-11″ers and some 8-1/2″ gills and then got the heck out. our next destination was an area with speedy current and a muck point that has a ledge into some sand. We spent the afternoon working that edge and current seam real hard with jigging rapalas and spoons trying to get the eyes and saugers to go. we had lots of lookers and one hit on Justin’s jig stick, but the first fish wasn’t iced until 4:30! the action was somewhat steady but the fish were running kind of small. We had to leave by 5:30 and the end result was 2 saugers and 2 walleyes for me. all were small, the biggest was a saug that would have hit around 13″ or so. All in all it was cool to bop some toothy perch on the head with a heavy buckshot spoon. I’m really looking forward to hitting this area again soon, and I’ll have more info on the bite there ASAP!
Hope everyone else that was out had a good day on the ice.
Cade
