late ice fishing on lake geneva

Many ice anglers know that late ice can be some of the best ice fishing to be had the entire season. Neal caught this gator this past weekend on Lake Geneva on a panfish rod and 3# test. He said that the battle was touch and go especially after the fish buried itself into the weeds. He opened the bail and waited for the fish to work itself out before re-engaging pressure on the fish. Now that the rivers are starting to open up, I myself have given up on the ice fishing but on many of lakes there is still plenty of safe ice to continue forward on the hardwater.

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spring run off

The larger rivers are still looking a bit high and muddy, the smaller creeks and rivers that flow into Lake Michigan are looking prime. Water temps are still in the 30's and don't imagine a huge improvement until most of the snow and frost melts. Don't be discouraged, its finally spring and reports of fresh chrome are starting to trickle in. While we came up empty on the first try, we did see a nice chrome fish caught down river on a spawn sack on bottom.

Exciting times!!!

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slump buster fly

A simple fly that is highly adaptable to many species and easy to wrap up in a variety of sizes. It consists of a braid or cord wrapped under-body and wire to latch down the tail and body section of rabbit strip. The head of course is a cone with a second strip of rabbit wrapped in to form the collar.

By no means is this a technical tie and are pretty easy to knock out in quick succession. On this fly I used white rabbit (duh) and a pink braid but this is a fun fly to mix up your material colors. Make it look like a egg sucking leech using an orange or pink bead with black or purple fur, oh yeah!

Time to transition from the hardwater to the feather, fur, and flows. Stay tuned as this blog is about to throw down on some new flies, vintage rod and reel, and some fly fishing reports...

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in the cloudy first few feet

Have you ever noticed that the first few feet on Hummingbird and Vexilar sonars always seem to have a lot of interference? I cant speak for Marcum flashers as I have never used one, but I always seem to have some trouble getting a good reading right below the puck. I've spent 95% of my time ice fishing jigging close to bottom only raising bait to suspended fish that move in on the sonar. The last few weeks I'm really beginning to rethink my approach.

We spent the morning fishing and we were just slaying perch off the bottom. They were extremely small perch but they managed to hold our interest for a few hours. Wondering where the hell all the panfish where was kinda mind boggling. Deep study of my Hummingbird led us to believe that there was something moving around in the cloudy first few feet.

We peered down the hole and we were just straight dumbfounded at the giant school of sunnies cruising just a foot below the ice. Needless to say, the flashers were turned off, the windows were closed, and we spent the rest of the day in a dark shack sight fishing just under the ice.

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