After hearing several horror stories throughout the week about the bite on Green Lake I was a little hesitant to head that way Sunday morning. Green Lake + 150 Fishermen in 6 or 7 days = Dead Sea.
1st stop was a community hole over on the Iowa side that has historically produced a nice mix of crappie & gills early ice for me. I figured since the Iowa boys were out chasing deer this weekend the croud would be minimized. I set up over 5fow and the X67 lit up the water column immediately. I didn’t have too much trouble escorting the first fish to the ice on the 2nd drop either. My pink/purple glitter cecil had attracted a nice fat stinker of a BASS. Iced three more LMB over the next 30 minutes or so before enough was enough. All four LMB were in the 12 to 14 inch range. No crappie. No gills. Wasn’t too interested in having one of them fat guys snap my 2lb Vanish and couldn’t help but think that was all that was going to happen in this area today. Eight others on the ice had little to nothing to show for their efforts either. Only species being caught was BASS and yet not a single tip-up was out.
2nd stop of the morning was a secluded area that gets very little attention from fellow bucketeers in the winter. I encountered a different type of a problem here. I drilled 5 sets of holes before running into some semi active fish hugging the bottom in 8fow. And I use the phrase “semi-active” loosely. Firetiger Diamond tipped with a waxie produced the bigger fish all though several different jigs produced. The key was having a nice mushy waxie waving around in the water. Baitless or plastic trailers produced nothing. Method was also a factor. Had to bounce the jig off bottom a couple of times and VERY slowly bring it up 6” to foot to trigger the utt-most delicate of a strike. The spring bobber definitely paid for itself this morning. I ended up pulling nine decent size gills with many more bait size gills. Seven & half was the biggest this location would give up this morning. Shoved them all back down the hole so no group pictures. No crappie.
Plenty of ice at both locations this morning at a minimunm of 3+ inches. Most holes burned through 4 inches of ice. Overall the bite was pretty slow. Definately a disadvantage having this much snow cover on the ice this early in the season. Yet more predicted today/tonight/tomorrow……Ugh!
