Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Ready for some ice fishing....

Here in SW Ohio we have been getting teased with skim and edge ice for the last 2-3 weeks while the folks about 30 miles north of me are now drilling on 3", very frustrating here but the 10 day forcasts with lows in the lower teens look promising. I am a ice fishing addict and cant wait to get out on some safe ice on my pond, so if you got some cool pond pics with good ice or better yet some ice fishing pics, please help me get my fix!!!!

Salmonid

Mark,

I've got about 4 inches on my ponds. I'm going to wait another month or so as I want to see if I goofed and planted some male perch in the female only perch pond. The closer it is to spawning time the better I can sex them. If I catch any they will go into the one of the cages.

BTW I can easily sex yellow perch at spawning time but had to move some back to the pond a different time of year due to a SNAFU some five star moles caused me.

Thanks man, the pond iced over completely day before yesterday so by the end of the week, maybe.......keeping my fingers crossed and I am really hoping to get some YOY YP so I know they spawned, havent seen one yet, just curious, how big would yearling YP be right about now?, 5-6" I am guessing??? All the other YP in the pond are between 9-12.5" and all are now 18 months old since they were put in as 4-6" guys.

Salmonid ( Mark)

I'd say 4 to 6 but a 7 is possible. Be aware when they are that small they bite really lightly and you have to use small hooks. And being in cold water they will bite more lightly than usual.

I caught dozens of 3-6" Golden shiners last year so I know all about a light bite, I am always useing a size 14-16 Ice jig tipped with mousies/waxies or spikes.
Thanks more updates when I start getting on some hard water

Salmonid

I have 4-5 inches of ice on my pond and I have fished once caught 7, kept 4 to eat. My 5-6 inch YP planted this spring appear to have done well, I have caught some 10 inchers, all are over 9 inches that I caught, but I haven't got any of them 12 inchers just yet. My ice was soft at the edges due to a recent thaw, where it broke thru I scooped a bunch of grass up on top of the ice and picked FH minnows out of that to use for bait, caught a few on FH's but most on worms. I discovered the FH's there while pulling some muskrat traps, I broke the ice out and found scads of them hiding there in mid december.

Joe,

I've got small fatheads in shallow water too. They are in the open water next to shore where my diffuser has opened the ice. The bigger fatheads I believe are in deeper water though as they were this fall.

You know cecil speaking about larger FH's made me remember that I didn't inspect the stomach contents of those fish when I cleaned them. I had been wondering what sized FH's those dudes were eating on. I have a forage pond that I am going to trap/seine hevily to add forage back to the main pond this year too but I was curious if my bigger fish were already reducing breeder populations, I assume the answer is yes.

I would think so.

I had thousands of fatheads in a small 1/1oth acre holding pond where I was temporarily keeping yellow perch and bluegills due to a problem in the main pond. That was in late spring. By fall I got a fair number of fatheads with the first seine haul, but after there there were hardly any once I completely drained down the pond. About 125 eight to twelve inch yellow perch and about 25 large bluegills has apparently decimated the thousands of fatheads.

I just checked and have all of a whopping 2.5-2.75" of ice here ( sw Ohio- Dayton) just barely enough to put 1 foot offshore and spud a hole . Looks like it will be another 3-4 days anyways before i go out.

Salmonid

So...what about the pictures? I am heading out this week to my new pond. This will be my first trip without my brother leading the way. Where do I look for my YP? I would like to not drill 30 holes if I can help it. 1/2 acre pond with three points and max depth of 15 feet.

Start in the center deepest spot. In 1/2 acre, how far can the fish go. I have my best success in the deepest areas or the pond "belly". In winter I rarely fish in areas less than 10ft if pond is 15 ft deep. I never have to drill more than 3 holes in different areas of the pond belly before I find willing YP.

However I just learned if pond has lots & lots of minnows YP when feeding will heard the minnows into shallow water and YP an be caught as shallow as 3-4 ft deep.

Thanks. I will give it a try this week.

I went out this afternoon and gave it a shot for about an hour, I caught all of a whopping 6 big golden shiners al about 6-7" long on waxies. Ice was a consistant 5" at the 4 holes I drilled but I just couldnt find the gills, crappies or perch today. What was weird was all the GS were taken about 4-8" of fthe bottom where i usually get my other panfish, the GS I usually get in the top half of the water column anyone else have this type of problem??

Salmonid
PS It sure did feel good to be out holding that bucket down for a while today!!

If D.O is sufficient all your fish species will be in the deepest warmest water close to the bottom except for some individual yellow perch and fatheads. Not sure why some fatheads are shallow in my pond but it may be due to the deeper water being a bad place to be if you know what I mean. Or like Bill said they get chased shallow.

Were you fishing weeds? That's where your bluegills will be. Find some weeds on the bottom in fairly deep water and you should find the bluegills. As far as the perch they can be just about anywhere -- even up shallow. Like Bill says deepest water near the bottom is best but I've found them fairly shallow too.

MarkB - Catching larger GS on small baits is one of the big drawbacks of stocking GS. They tend to be bait stealers and a nuisance to panfish anglers. The presence of GS in deep water indicates to me the larger panfish were shallower possibly feeding on zooplankton or small fish. Did you try fishing shallow 4'-7' deep? Or maybe fishing higher in the water column where zoplankton often is during winter. Larger fish activity in one location can push smaller fish into another zone of the pond.
Another hint to not be bothered by GS is to use small minnows as bait.

Thanks, good advice, I did have 1 hole in about 8 ft of water the rest were in 12 or so. I got nothing at that one, Being my first time on the ice and by myself, I focused today in the deepest section of the clay bottomed pond, I really have no weeds to speak of. I was trying to find my big bundle of sunken ceders I have right out in the middle, once i find that, Ill be on all sorts of fish, at least that was my honey hole last year. I also have some sunken trees in about 6-8 ft of water that I did not drill by yet, I really was testing the waters. Give me a few days and Ill be on at least some some fish, just got to locate them. Maybe one of these days Ill actually buy a graph. Until then Ill just keep turning my pond into swiss cheese until I find them. Ha ha oh yeah, I figure the blue cats will be big enough this year to rapidly shrink the GS population.

Salmonid

First year getting into hard water fishing and you learn something new every trip...much like open water fishing.

New Year's Day bluegills...

I got out again 2 times since my last post and 1 of them resulted in a few more GS and then I finally bore a hole over that bunch of ceders I knew was down there in 9 ft of water, It wasnt where i remembered it so that was a major problem. Once i found that , I pretty much have been on the fish ever since, including taking of 8 Black Crappies, mostly about 8.5" and still pretty skinny, ( Im gonna refresh the FH's this spring so that should get them a good jumpstart for the year) and about 15-20 BG from 4-8.25" with a lot of 5-6" guys so they were probably from this past spring's hatch so that was a good sign, then a dozen or so HBG mostly from 8-9.25" and heavy with a few 5-6" ones so they must have spawned a little bit as well. I also took a 8.25" Red Ear so that was cool, only the 3rd one I have seen in almost 3 years. Al fish on Glow Roxies jigs tipped with Waxies or Spikes. Anyways, the pond seems to be working out good right now and I hope to get out on the ice 1 more time in this 40 degree weather and hopefully wont pull a Cecil.....
Here are a few pics from the last trip that my buddy posted. ( I am in the bottom 2 photos with the RES and the BC)

http://www.ohiogamefishing.com/community/showthread.php?t=136684

Still looking for some YOY YP

Salmonid

Sounds good Mark but IMHO planting fatheads in a pond that has an established population of predator fish is waste of money.

Cecil, I hear what your saying but need to figure out a way to help the starving BC when everything else in the pond is rather plump... I do feed all summer so that will help the CC and HBG and BG and even the YP but the BC just dont come up for the pellets so they are only able to survive on the FH and YOY fish and remember, there are not a lot of YOY fish, I am gonna work on the spawning beds to see if that will help. The pond is choke full of GS but they are all 5-7" as I imagine everything smaller has been eaten by the HSB ( they are around 11-12" now) and the Blue Cats and Channels which are about 2.5-4 lbs. I figure the GS will keep the cats and Hybrid stripers happy but he BC are fending on a ever dwindling supply of FH's, I gigur eits been 3 years now and I still have a few but figure if I refresh them every few years that will help them out. Lets face it 20/30 lbs of FH is reletively cheap in the big picture and I figure too much is never a bad thing. Other options?? I have several ceder trees scattered around the pond edges and will stock them at each tree to help them survive the intial plunge.

I might add that if I do have some YOY YP then they will need some FH to eat as well.

Oh yeah, token last Ice report for a while, still had 4-5" of decent ice with a 1/2 " of water on top of it, took a few more HBG, a few small BG and about a dozen 6-7" GS in an hour or so this afternoon. With temps near 40 for the next 7-10 days, Im done, I never liked cold showers...

Salmonid

Just had the first trip on my pond (the first winter for it). I was reeling in 5-6" BG like Virgil Ward! It is nice to have a small pond where the fish come to you.




And here is my whopper! Don't let the picture fool you. The fishing hole is 2 feet across.


The pond is everything I wanted for the winter. I just have to find the perch.

Pretty coloration on that BG...

There, Travis, I fixed your post for you!

I was reeling in 5-6" BG like Virgil Ward

which one is you, Coach?