Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Brrrrr........it's cold!

I wish you guys would keep your cold temps up there where they belong. Its getting old here fast!

I hear Fla. is even in for some low 30ish temps.

Shorty those are healthy looking fish. I hope you kept them -- State rules or not.

Winston - it's 9 degrees out right now, the wind chill here is -18 below. The good news is that I should be able to safely go ice fishing this weekend. It looks like we will have more than a two week long ice fishing season here in NE, that hasn't happened in number years.

Ewest, I released all of the LMB and the one BG, only the smallest (14") LMB was in our our 12-15" harvest slot. The other six LMB were all in the 15-1/2" to 18-1/4" range. As an observation, this is very typical of ice fishing and early spring fishing, for some unkown reason LMB under 15" are rarely caught at our pond when the water temps are below 55 degrees. My guess is that the smaller LMB are just much less active in the cold water than the larger fish over 15".

This is today, from the first pond I was ever responsible for managing.

We're still harvesting tons of nice crappie and bluegill.

So Bruce...would it be safe to say that you have secured the crappie necessary for the fish fry at the PB Convention? I think Greg volunteered to clean them as long as someone brought a propane cooker.

Hee Hee!

It took almost two hours to clean them. It ended up being twelve pounds of filets.

Dang, Bruce. Those are all thru the ice? Great management job. Were they scattered or all schooled up? Jigs?

I'm with you Sunil, fried crappie and Shiner Bock. No place but Texas. :p

It's an OK management job in the respect that there are lots of hungry fish--and my kids and nephews had a blast.

The only thing I don't like is that there aren't many bluegill over 8 inches.

When we started harvesting largemouth between 12 and 14 inches, the panfish numbers took off. Now we've got largemouth that average three pounds, tons of bluegill in the 7.5 inch range and smaller, and crappies that go from 8-14 inches.

The fish were everywhere. The pond is about 3 acres and the fish hit in every hole.

They were biting on waxworms. My kids were sunburned and I'm awfully exhausted right now. Our freezer will be good for about four months now.

Here's my Dad with one of the nicer crappie.

Come on, Bruce. It's better than an OK job with those 3 species in 3 acres. Something has to give. So it's the 10" BG. Hard to keep them all happy. Kids are happy; that's the best thing. I dont know what you could do to get bigger BG; maybe a couple gater gars to work on the crappie?

Here is a LMB from yesterday at our pond that was pushing 6 lbs., the funny thing is this bass nailed my ice fishing weight while I was setting the depth on a tip up, so technically she was caught on an artificial through the ice. She measured 20-3/4" with the mouth closed and the tail lobes pinched together.

That's a lot of fillets (envy).

Did you leave those fish laying out in the sun all day before cleaning? I hope they didn't go bad. :p

good story, shorty. Nice fish. I'm jealous. You have an advantage though. All the fish are in that little hole. :rolleyes:

Just when I think I am finished with the PB slide show and after I copy it to a DVD, some guy posts an unbelievable pic of his "ice box" filled with BG and Crappie. Uggghh !

It hit the weight?!? That's amazing. How did it not come off?

Gorgeous fish, Shorty. That's especially true when you consider that Nebraska is not "really" the "south." I took my two sons and a nephew out yesterday. We didn't catch many perch, but the biggest smallmouth was just at 20 inches. She was heavy, and she might have been 5 pounds -- if not, darn close.

It was one of those "clip on ice fishing weights", I had it clipped to the hook and was just setting the depth a foot off the bottom when she hit it. Normally I set the depth, pull the line back up and put a minnow on, then drop it back in the hole, I never got a chance to put a minnow on the line.



A 20" SMB Dr. Willis, now you are making me green with envy. :p

that's pretty enough to make me want to move to nebraska. what a pic!!

The forecast here tomorrow is for a high of 81.

Once again, I got to visit Abilene, Texas. Was hoping to warm a bit, as Iowa's been dang cold for a long time. The ONE time I don't check Accuweather...and it's 26F and snowing when I stepped off the plane down there on Wednesday.

Managed to warm to the 50's by Sunday, but with that gentle west-Texas breeze (perhaps 30 mph) blowing, I was glad to see home. It was in the high 20's yesterday, and maybe 40 DEGREES today! Yippee, spring's coming!

41 outside now; after all the single digits it feels like about 60.

Theo, just keep your shirt on...please?

Not to worry. I'm saving myself for Texas.

38 degrees was the high here today, 56 degrees warmer then the 18 below zero night we had a couple weeks ago.

It looks like our ice has maxed out at 20 inches for this winter and spring is on it's way!