From ice to open water
A few brave souls are still ice fishing in central Illinois. But not for long.
Deep strip mine lakes had open water Thursday. Standing water covered the ice of many others. And edges are nasty enough to require a board to get onto remaining ice.
Despite all that, there are reports of good catches. That includes a 6-pound largemouth bass hauled to Presley’s Outdoors on Wednesday.
Of more interest to some is the open water. The Pike Hole is open on the south end of Spring Lake and Jason Grider of Riverside Bait reports anglers catching “tons of crappie and some nice ones.”
Powerton Lake has yielded a few big smallmouth bass and several blue catfish ranging from 8 to 40 pounds.
Farther afield, guide Todd Gessner reported some excellent crappie fishing on Sangchris Lake.
Up north, Dale Bowman of the Chicago Sun-Times writes:
This weekend is probably the transitional one, especially on southern lakes and ponds where there may be some ice-out fishing from northern shorelines. West and north, safe ice should hold into at least next week.
Click here for the rest of Bowman’s report.
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Hold on just a darned minute or should I say a few more days. Ice fishing out around the Victoria area has been holding its own lately and is still coughing up some decent catches with hard work and many holes drilled to find the biters. My main motto is “Do Not Die In One Hole” and has held true to form the last week on the Ice. Gills to 9 1/2 inches and Red Ears to 10 1/2 inches have been on the ice for my son and son-in-law and I all last week and a 14 7/8 inch crappie weighing in at 1 pound 13 ozs came through the ice for me yesterday. All winter a jig and plastic tail has been my go to bait but as late we have had to use bait on our jigs (2 spikes—meaning maggots) to get the fish to commit.
Let us just say that open water will soon be upon us but for die hard icefisherman like me “Lets just keep banging those litle round holes through the hard water and staring at the Vexilar wating for the next biter to show up”. Keep safety in mind on the late Ice. We’ve had 10 to 12 inches of good solid Ice through today but if rains develop watch the shorelines for deteriorating Ice conditions. As long as we can safely get on the Ice from the shoreline I look for another week of hard water fishing. Good Fishing LonerFly
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