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February 2008
- February 1 - We went chasing the elusive smallmouth
through the ice with smallmouth guru John Graham. We
managed 7 nice largemouth, but could not connect with a
smallie.
- February 2 - We started the morning ice fishing for
panfish with John and his dad. We caught a nice mess of
bluegill, but had to work for them. We could catch 3 or 4
bluegill within the first 5 minutes of drilling a new
hole, but then the holes would go dry. We just kept on
moving around all morning and ended up with 2 five gallon
buckets full to the top with 79 bluegill, 7 largemouth and
1 catfish. Next year I will have to invest in a power
auger or a designated hole driller!
We decided to try to get some trophy perch for the
afternoon, so we moved to a new lake a few miles away. The
perch would not cooperate, and the other fish seemed to be
a little hesitant to bite as well. We managed a few small
bluegill, bass, and crappie, but no perch! The afternoon
fishing was slow, but we enjoyed a nice mess of fried fish
and mushrooms out on the ice!!!
- February 3 - We went ice fishing in the afternoon with
the Luginbuhls from Roanoke. We started off slow the
first half hour, but once we
figured out where the fish were, we hammered them! The
fish were biting like crazy right before the storm, we had
lightning, thunder and 2 inches of snow! The eerie feeling
created by the approaching storm was incredible. We caught
61 bluegill, 2 bass and a catfish and we only fished from
2:00 to 3:30 pm. Only 5 bluegill were under 1/2 lb! With
the fish biting so aggressively we were able to use larger
lures to select for bigger fish!
- February 7 - We met up with Bill A. from Northern
Illinois and Larry D. from East Peoria for an afternoon of
trout fishing. Bill was using a rapala countdown with the
front hook removed and the trout were attacking that bait
more aggressively than I have ever seen! He caught 35+
trout, his biggest was 4.25 lbs! Larry was fishing with a
panther martin spinner and catching some fish, but the
bait of the afternoon was the rapala countdown, until a
monster trout swam away with Bill's hot bait. He tried a
few other sizes and colors, but nothing worked better than
the first. It is always good to fish with someone new,
because I would never have tried those rapalas for rainbow
trout.
- February 11 - Wow, was it ever cold outside! We
met Chef Todd and Jeff Lampe at 9 am for a little
icefishing 101......just kidding guys! The morning started
off a little slow, we drilled a bunch of holes in the
usual hot spots, and caught just a handful of fish. We
knew the fish were biting, because when they would show up
on the Vexilar, we would catch 'em. So we decided to keep
on moving around till we found some concentrated fish. Our
next spot was a little more consistent action, and Jeff
for some reason decided to move in to shore a little
closer than what I would have recommended, but I decided
not to say anything. He was in about 7 1/2' of water just
10' from Chef Todd, and the Jeff to Chef catch ratio had
to be 3 to 1. I kept moving around trying to find the fish
concentrated somewhere, but they were just scattered
across the whole lake. Anyhow we caught our 40 "boone
and crocket" bluegills and headed for the next pond
for some experimental ice fishing. Jeff was the first
person to ever legally catch a fish from this pond, but
the Chef stole the show here landing 3 nice channel cats
and a whole bunch of hybird bluegills.
- Friday,
February 15 - Justin and I went out trout fishing in
the morning to try out some more new baits. We used the
new Berkeley Gulp Minnows and Justin caught a 4.5 lb
rainbow on his first cast! His second cast wasn't even
half as good as the first, he only landed a 1.75 lb
rainbow! Then we went icefishing for a couple hours and
managed about 35 bluegill and 2 crappie.
- Saturday,
February 16 - We filmed a trout fishing show with
Adventure Sports Outdoors in the morning and filmed an
icefishing show in the afternoon. They landed a 3 lb and
4.25 lb rainbows on film along with numerous 2 lbers. Then
we went out icefishing and set-up a picnic table, fish
cleaning station, and our deep fryer out on the ice. They
caught a nice mess of bluegill and we cleaned and cooked
them right out on the lake! We also cooked up some french
fries and mushrooms to go along with the fresh bluegill!
- Saturday, February 23 - I went trout fishing with
Ron from DA Hoerr Landscaping, Jim from Dixon's Seafoods,
my father in-law and also my dad. We had a
good time watching the trout feed voraciously and caught
several of them in about 15 minutes of fishing before we
had to go to the Spring Home Show. Ron caught the biggest
fish, Jim seems to target the little guys....hehe! If you
want to catch a lot of fish, Jim would make a great
partner. If you want to catch a big fish, Ron is your man!
- Wednesday, February 27 - We did some experimental
ice fishing on a lake in Fulton County
to see if the fish survived the winter. The lake is
experiencing a huge bloom of a very rare form of cold
water blue-green algae called Planktothrix
rubescens. It survives the
summer below the thermocline, then if the conditions are
right, blooms at the surface during the winter. It can
produce toxins deadly to fish, but also blocks the
sunlight from performing photosynthesis, resulting in low
oxygen conditions. We did catch 2 fish in about 2 hours of
icefishing and marked several others on the vexilar, but couldn't
get them to open their mouths. Sounds like a bad day
icefishing, but actually we were more excited about
catching those 2 fish than any others all year!
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