Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Streams are high and dirty

All streams in Iowa and Western Dane county that I checked are high and muddy. The success of opening weekend all depends on the weather Friday. If we get a good rain on Friday 90 percent of the streams and rivers will be high and dirty. Let's hope for a little snow or for this system to miss us.


They are calling currently calling for a windy opening day with winds gusting to 25 mph.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Weather worth watching for opener

Looks like southern Wisconsin will miss the major snowstorm forecasted for the Central and Northern part of the state. Lacrosse, Vernon and counties to the north are still expected to get some snow and southern counties get mostly rain. Friday will have yet another system move in with more potential rain which would melt the snow pack on the west and north facing bluffs...... This has the potential to really mess things up. Saturday is forecasted currently to have windy conditions with snow showers early with a high of 32 but falling temps during the day to drop into the mid 20's.

I will be keeping a close eye out and will post stream conditions for Dane and Iowa counties with the weather turns.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Last ice fishing trip of the season

Well we wanted to get out ice fishing one more time this season........ So four of us drove up to Lake Puckaway in Central Wisconsin looking for some pike. This lake holds the Wisconsin state record northern at 38 pounds! This large shallow lake which is apart of the fox river systems supports great size and numbers of game fish. Pike and walleyes are the most common but it also produces a good catfish and bass fishery. We set up at 8:30-5:30 for a all day fishing trip and the action was good. We had flags all day but only landed 4 pike (27,28,28,30) and one large bass. We were running huge shinners in the middle of the lake in about 4.5 feet of water. We also experienced a good amount of drops which is uncommon for us since we use light line and smaller hooks. We believe the drops were from catfish of large perch. Martin had a big one on which broke his line and he also had a bite off.

I have some pictures I will add soon as well.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

New Rapala Ultra Lite Series

Check out these great new lures coming from Rapala. I had to pick a couple up today when I saw them. They look like a hybrid of the x-rap and husky jerk and comes in 1.5/2.5 inch baits. Great patterns offered I picked up brown trout and rainbow trout patterns today. Nice heavy lure in a small package should allow for great casting.

They also have a shad rap style in smaller sizes and lipless crank baits. Great presentation to change things up!

The brown trout pattern looks like a sure thing!

Check them out here

http://www.rapala.com/Ultra-Light-Minnow/Ultra%20Light%20Minnow,default,pd.html

Winter in review

Well it has been over a month since my last post. Things got insanely busy at work which limited my time drastically. Over the past month we have finally got out ice fishing for pike and bass mainly. Action has been steady with some nice fish caught on tip ups fishing in 8-12 feet of water around green weeds. We haven't fished for panfish much this winter because of the late ice. Typically we like to target panfish during the early ice period but once the ice did form the fish were already in mid-winter patterns.
Hunting was very good with the warm temperatures! Rabbits, pheasants, grouse, turkey, deer and other animals should be in good supply next year!


And the great news is trout season starts in just 16 days!