To Be or Not To Be

To be, or not to be?  That is the question on my mind this winter.  Will we see ice on our lakes or not?  The last two weeks have been very frustrating to say the least.  I actually had the boat out on December 31^st catching wipers again.  That’s over now though.

My dad called me up last week and told me that he’d been ice fishing on some of the Mississippi backwaters.  I couldn’t believe that safe ice was only a matter of 2 and half hours away.  The bad news was that the fish are running small.  Oh, well…..ice is ice at this point.  I took Tuesday off of work and was on my way.

My dad and I ate a hearty breakfast of spicy Italian sausage, eggs, and toast.  It was nice eating some real food.  I started a diet….I mean a lifestyle change this year.  Coffee in the cups and on the road to the promised ICE!  We arrived early and unloaded our gear.  I walked on ahead of my dad and had my first hole drilled by the time he caught up with me.  I set the hook on a dink crappie as he watched.  Hmmm….  I fished a while longer but with the same results.  I decided to move on.  I set up on a familiar spot.  I decided to set up 2 tip downs in hopes to get some river perch.  I tipped them with small rosies and set up shop.

It didn’t take long and one of my tip-downs was bobbing.  I quickly got to it and felt the line…..fish on!  I gave the line a quick tug.  A 7” perched breached the hole.  The fish was a blaze of yellow and orange with a deep green body.  Back down the hole with ya….too small.  I reset the tip-down and returned to my jigging rod.  Not more than a few seconds later and it was bobbing down again.  This time a nice 10 inch perch.  I started to have visions of fried perch fillets sizzling in a pan.  Hell, with the diet.  The tip-downs performed really well for me through the morning.  I caught 10 perch with only 2 keepers and 10 large mouth bass.  The biggest being an 18 inch 3 ½ pounder.  That was a load to bring in by hand.  I have to admit, I’m hooked on the tip-downs.  They can really be fun to use.  This was my first time using them.  I was able to catch a few crappies on them later in the day.

About noon the fishing slowed down to a crawl.  I decided to move down to where my dad was fishing.  I pulled up beside him and he told me that he was just getting ready to come up to where I was.  Not a good sign.  I started to hole hop though.  I marked fish right away in the first hole.  I dropped down to the red marks waiting.  I started to catch a few gills and a small crappie.  Moving was the key.  I would catch a fish or two in each hole I tried.  Around 3 I stumbled on a few bigger crappie and kept 4 fish for dinner.It was great to finally get out on the ice.  It was 50 that day and felt like March late ice.  The quantity of fish was pretty high but quality was an issue…still it was better than what we have down here in Central Eastern Iowa.  We may not get enough cold weather to freeze up the lakes around here.  I might just have to go back up for another round.