It has started

[olsarge]

Woke up this morning to a temperature of 47 degrees and a calm wind!  Forecast is for a high of 60 and winds of 5 to 10 mph/  That is fishin weather if I have ever seen it/  Went to a local small lake.  Only 2 other people there and they had only caught 2 small bass.  My 3rd cast resulted in a gorgeous 13 inch crappie.  Caught a total of 9 crappie and kept the 6 biggest for supper.  Lost 3 others at the bank.  Winner for the day was the 2.25 inch small fry in electric chicken and also a white one.  Felt fantastic to get out.  Get ready christmas may come early this year!

[Lines]

Way to go olsarge! I was thinking about who might be out today. Still quite a bit of ice on some of our local ponds.

[Paneltruck.lures]

Today would have been a great day here to fish. When you go to lunch in February and have the sunroof open and drivers window down it’s a good day. Unfortunately retiring at 38 just hasn’t worked out yet so I had to be at work. I’m ready for the time change so maybe I’ll get to fish a little after work on weekdays.

[Shaunm81]

Wow thats a pretty good day.

[WALLEYE WACKER]

59 and clear today and 48 and cloudy at 8 pm. Wish I had more vac. Saving it for a trip south hopefully mid summer. And my brother was talking about a trip to Canada again this year. Sure wish the weather would stop teasing us. There getting walleye in the boats right now. Going to the river this weekend and see if they want to play.

[ctom]

The last couple days here have been great....52 yesterday and we're supposed to be near that again today then the weather changes to wet again. Hopefully wet means rain. Between my doctor's office visits Ma and I got to get outside for our two mile walks each of the last two days too.

The river and creek behind our house have opened up big time now so I should start to drive out to monitor the open water developing on the lake north of town. There's a line of open water that will develop leaving ice sheets on either side of it and where that open water makes landfall finally sits a dock that I can get on to fish. Interesting place. I can hang my submersible thermometer under a float and cast it our along the ice on either side and the water will be right around 34 degrees. In the middle of the open water run its about 38-40 degrees. Guess where the fish are at...crappies and smallies that is.

The largest crappies of the year are caught while the ice is on either side of the open water and these big old silver sides love those plastics. I don't find many plastics they won't hit but I have never needed one larger than a good old 1.5" Thump-It fished on a 1/32 collarless ballhead under a float. Its the easiest fishing of the season. The toughest part about it is figuring out how deep to fish and that doesn't take very long.

Last year we were hit with several periods of high water in the spring starting about now but we had more snow too. Hopefully we won't see much more of this white junk and if temps stay moderate things will not get out of hand and fishing gets and stays good for a while. I have water right here behind me but use it only for checking out bait action. I walk down and hand out jigs and plastics to kids fishing down there in the warm seasons and they catch fish, but I like the lake just out of town and we do have several retention lakes right here in town. The lake north of town has some very large crappies and smallies in it and gets my attention first though and that's closely followed by the Mississippi River when the world warms up.