Eastern Iowa Ice Fishing Report 12.25.2008

Christmas and Walleyes!! Nothing better than that for dinner!
Cold front, high pressure, low pressure, hurricane winds, -40 wind chills and a high of 40 tomorrow, have put even the best Iowa ice fishermen to the test lately.

Lately, I have remained content to fish my home waters of lake Macbride. These fish are proving to “evolve” more on this later-

I will say that the major shift in the weather patterns have given us zero help with stability, but there are always fish biting right? It just hasn’t been “easy” lately. Coaxing one in twenty fish is a good bite/sniffer ratio.

I will say that I am thankful for “slower” fishing periods. Slow times allow ice fisherman to fine tune his presentation, study and learn from his electronics and become a better over all ice angler. Rather than, biters vs non biters, I have been varying my cat and mouse game with the fish, and really trying to trigger inactive fish to bite.

One thing in particular I have really studied lately, is how I present my spoon, and how the fish react to a falling spoon(slow fall, fast fall, flutter fall, controlled fall, controlled flutter with the fall). My biggest trick that I have recently learned is how to call fish into an area with only a falling bait- Typical lure presentation will not get these finicky fish to strike, it has to be a falling lure, falling most times in excess of 10 feet. For example I have been fishing in 15 fow of water. The fish are showing up on the marcum on the bottom up to five feet off the bottom. If you simply jig your bait in that area it simply will NOT call in a fish. However, if you take your bait to the top of the ice, and let it fall, and repeat five times, it will draw them in like clockwork.

Relating this back to the fish “evolving” lets take a look the bait fish and the game fish feeding patterns. Typically a walleye and a hybrid wiper this time of year are running on high oxygen levels and great light penetration, and they are aggressive predators. With oxygen levels low, and light penetration at a bare minimum these predatory fish aren’t killing and eating their own food, they are honing in on weak, dying or old shad.

With a “sinking” bait presentation, I believe it is mimicking a low energy meal and triggering an instinctive strike on spoon that represents an easy shad meal.

With that said, I am really thankful for my LX-5’s they have helped me fine tune a “sinking” bait presentation that is literally, wounded and deadly!
It is really unbelievable the amount of information you can learn from an lx-5.

We are still managing to run into some very quality fat hybrids like shown in the pictures. The photos simply don’t begin to show the girth of these fish!

I am also thankful for the Christmas season, and fish-able ice! Thanks for coming down James and fishing with Andy and I, it is always a pleasure fishing with you! Sarah- my beautiful fiancee also spent some great time on the ice with me lately! Thanks Babe! I promise I will be a better guide once we are married!

Merry Christmas to all here at IDO, and to all a good night!

Stay safe, and we’ll see you on the hard water!