Well, there is not much to report on here in Iowa. Andy, Trevor, Tom, and I have logged over 400 miles in the past two days looking for something new. We found only one good river spot with ice on it, and only spotted two walleyes on the cameras. This past week has been really depressing but we are still getting some quality fish-
The path to ice has taken us all over Iowa- north south east, and west. Much of the ice, or lack there of, on the rivers is not safe. What "safe" ice we have found did not produce any walleyes for us. Andy and I made it out on a spot along the Iowa river, and Andy caught two short walleyes. I had one bite, and didn’t get a good hook set.
With no safe ice on the rivers, I have went back to trying to find a consistent walleye bite on macbride, and that has rewarded me with a ton of spent gas, and countless miles on the snowmobile, and ZERO walleyes. I have been getting into alot of nice eater size catfish, but I have been releasing them all. I did catch a cat that was around eight pounds early this morning while targeting walleyes, I knew it was a cat, but I closed my eyes as I was reeling him in, and dreamed it would come out of the hole as a walleye, it definitely came out as a slimy cat!
While being back on Macbride, the hybrid bite has pretty much went dead for me. It is a good evening if you can pick up 5-10 fish between 2-3 guys. That is very depressing considering we were getting close to 20-30 per guy each night for about two weeks straight.
I have been going out each morning and evening on Macbride, searching hard for walleyes, and then just leisure fishing for crappies mid-day. I have got a few crappies that are pushing 13" but not many of them. The 8-10" macbride crappies are plentiful and give off some good mid day entertainment on the end of your ice line.
I sure would like to get into some walleyes on Macbride, and I will continue to search until my river spots freeze up. If anybody is getting into the walleyes on Macbride, I am all ears!! 
I hope everyone is getting out and enjoying the ice!
Happy New Years, and we’ll see you on the hard water!
Here are a couple more pictures from the past couple of days-
First one is of Tom Nugent’s brother and I getting to the next spot, with otter in tow-
Second one is a picture of my new otter set up on a walleye spot early morning- I will say this shack is a dream. I can haul a ton of gear it in, and it tows extremely well behind my snowmobile. The tarp and tub are both heavy duty, and I am really impressed with this shack!
Third picture is of a BK fish…ish!
Those are some nice sized hybrids, they can’t say you aren’t trying.
I’ve never fished Macbride but I’m going to have to give it a try. How thick is the ice there?
Ed
Ed, we are anywhere from 6-8″… I found a spring tonight by accident, up by the dam looking for walleyes…
It went from 8″ to less than 2″ in a hurry, I can’t believe the snowmobile didn’t go through…
WOW!! It must have been some good ice. I hope they are off on the forecast for this weekend, sounds like it’ll be warmer down your way than up here.
Ed
Thanks Luke,taking the good with the bad is all part of the game.The main point is, you guys are still after it!Thanks for the report
Nice hybrids Luke. And nice cat too [Briank will be proud]
Thanks for the report and pics.
Thanks, Bill
We are going to change gears this weekend and get on some nice fish… I sincerely hope so anyway.
Hey Luke, What are those hybrids weighing in at. Do they pull anything like the white bass do during the spring spawn up here?? Looks like an absolute blast on a 30″ rod.
Kooty- never got a scale on them, but Andy did earlier in the fall, and he had one that was 27″ pushing 11 lbs. I think it is safe to say that the 20″ are around five lbs. And we caught a ton of those, and quite a few in the 20-25″ range.
They fight way harder than the whites! They never give up!
Lucky son of gun!!!