Saturday & Sunday

After a week of sub-freezing weather (much of which was single digits) I got out on the ice at Smithville. Took me a few stops to find an accessible place with safe ice that I thought would be worth fishing, but eventually did. It was more a scouting mission than anything...but I brought the auger and the livescope just in case. Turns out I found 3+ inches of clear ice above pods of fish. Had to drop a line. Nice looking dots on the screen.

Didn't take long before catching a ~16" white bass whose size belied the size of the dot on the screen.





Second fish was a much smaller white bass. Then started in on the crappie.





This one was about 11". Everything was going back in the water. This was just a scouting mission, after all.

Ended up catching one more big ol' white bass about the same size as the first one, and a couple more crappie. As I was throwing back the fourth or fifth decent size crappie, I was thinking, "I should be keeping these!!" But...didn't bring anything to put them in and I was committed to C&R this day. Plus I was about ready to go. Got one or two more and left the ice.

Had to travel out of town for work the whole next week, so didn't get back out. Thursday (and especially Friday!!) were unseasonably warm and the surface of many lakes and ponds was turning to water on top of ice. But super cold conditions on Saturday and Sunday froze it all up again, and I got back out on the ice for a couple hours on Sunday evening.





This time I brought a bucket to take some cold water crappie home with me. These were really decent fish...all between 10 and 12. There were a few dinks mixed in. Those went back in the hole, despite being "keepers" (technically) on Smithville.

Only ended up with 5 decent ones though, and as I walked off the ice at around 5:45pm, it was pretty dark. Not bad for a couple hours, though.





No water in the bucket, so they all sorta froze on the ice, which made them hard to measure, and even harder to fillet cuz they wouldn't lay flat!! But...I persevered.





This just never gets old!! It was good to get out and feel the tug.