February Chills and Scaly Thrills

So Winter has decided to leave us this year. FINE I say! BITE ME WINTER! Since there is no ice, anglers who would love to be sitting in their warm shelters need to change their game up some if they want to keep catching fish all year round. So we have been doing just that to keep our gilled foes at the end of our lines. There are some places that produce some fish even when some lakes still have thin ice on them. These spots include discharges, run offs, creek mouths, spillways, dams, warming lakes, and pond and lakes with at least some open water on them.

Today Darkstar arrived at my house coffee in hand before sunrise. Here is a bottom line, if you want your spot you have to get up earlier than the next guy. We arrive at a discharge and fish hard for two hours. The bite was slow but we managed to catch two fish for our efforts. DS caught a really nice carp and I a channel cat. We decide to move up river to Batavia where I knew a few deep holes. We completely dissected the holes but we came up empty.

My phone rings and Steelie Pete is on the line asking were we should meet to fish. We had planned on fishing in Elgin but since the bite was so slow we decided to switch gears and hit some ponds for ice out crappie and gills. The retention pond we picked was 90% still encased ice. We fished the only hole in the ice we could find. The trick to success just before and just after ice for me has always been to treat it as ice I am ice fishing. So targeted smaller ice presentations such as ice jigs, waxies, spikes, minnows, small floats, and split shot to control wind drift and depth. Ice plastics would work as well. All three of caught fish! Crappies and blue gills were the order of the day, each of us caught several fish. I had a small issue landing fish for a few strikes and the guys didn’t let it slip by without razzing me a bit. We told stories and laughed. However it is February and cold so 

Jack frost came along too, uninvited of course. He is kind of a jerk. He doesn’t even fish not sure why he even showed up! Well he kept bothering us as we fished and we slowing got colder and colder loosing the feeling in our fingers and toes. After some great fun angling with fellow DA Members we decide to call it a day.