Early 2019 Icefishing Season

Ice season is over.  It was a short one.  My last open-water flyfishing outing was November 24, 2018.  After that, we had ice, but it wasn't good safe ice thick enough to fish on.  Consequently, there was no fishing in December 2018 at all, and then the icefishing locally finally got underway on January 20.

My buddy Jay measured 17" of ice on March 2nd, and 20" of ice on March 8.  My last icefishing outing for this season was March 10.  Then we got some rain, I went on Spring Break, and when I got back on March 23, the ice was gone from most of the local ponds.

Caught some nice fish, especially bass.  I gotta give HUGE credit to Jay Ohm, who out-bassed me by a HUGE margin all winter long.  The funny thing is...we were usually fishing not far from each other, and also using the same lures/bait.  Different colors, maybe.  One other difference was he was using a stiffer ice rod, while mine had a very sensitive tip for detecting light bites from panfish.  What we think was the difference is that Jay would drop his spoon down and pound the bottom a few times, then raise it up a few feet.  He couldn't detect light bites very well with this rod, so he usually moved his lure away from fish when they showed up on his ice flasher, forcing the fish to hit more aggressively.  Bass would come in and HAMMER it.  My success improved when I tried to mimic his technique, but I still didn't catch as many as Jay.  He was fully charged with BASS MOJO!!  :)

We also hit one pond twice during the icefishing season to target catfish.  I didn't use special bait or lures....just used the same thing I was using for crappies, bass & bluegills.  Basically, it was just fishing a pond that had a good catfish population.  They aren't real big, but it was still fun.  The first time we tried it, I caught something like 6 catfish (plus other fish), with the biggest being 24" long.  Pretty fun! The next time we tried it, I only caught one smaller catfish (plus other fish).

Here's some pictures from the season:

Jay with a good ice bass.

This was the biggest catfish of the season at 24" long.

Pumpkinseed Sunfish are so beautiful!  Even during the winter!

Occasionally I think Jay would let a bass swim on by so I could try to catch one. ;o)

This is a beautiful fish:

I'm trying, and failing, to keep up with Jay's bass productivity.

One of these many bass (maybe this one below?) was Jay's biggest bass in years, he said.  I think it was just under 20".... like 19.75".

Yeah.  See what I mean?  The bass were going crazy for whatever it was Jay was doing differently.
My biggest bass of the winter season was this 20" fish:

Big Hybrid Sunfish:

So, it was a very short icefishing season this time around, but we got out a few times and caught some good fish.  That's what we hope for when riding out Iowa winters!