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.
