Saturday, December 21, 2013

Giant Bass Ice Fishing Central Illinois

Today we went ice fishing at a rock quarry lake that is being managed for trophy largemouth bass. Our plan was to catch 500+ big bluegill and as many little bass as possible. Well, the bluegill actually were not biting very well, but the bass for some reason were...

Mike Quigley caught this giant bass at about 11 am today on a small jig tipped with a plastic tail and a waxworm:


He followed that bass up about an hour later with this nice one too:



Then he was reeling in an 11" bass when a mega giant grabbed it and took him for a little ride. Eventually she let go and Mike reeled in the bass who probably was really happy to get out of that lake. Here are the scar marks:


We caught plenty of "cull" bass today as well...



We did catch about 150 bluegill altogether, but I was kinda disappointed as I was hoping for 500+...



We wrapped things up in Princeville at about 1 pm and then headed over to some specialty ponds over near Hanna City to check on some fish... These young smallmouths are looking very healthy:




These perch are only 2.5 yrs old as well and well on their way to mega trophies:




So anyhow it freezing rained on us for the last few hrs of the day, but it was good to be outside fishin! We caught great fish, but we had to work for them, they actually werent biting as good as I had hoped.... Lets hope they bite good next week!!  Next week Saturday the 28th, we are fishing trophy bluegills and big catfish with some bonus walleye and maybe even a muskie at my lake in Canton. Anyone interested in more info just email me at nate@hblakemanagement.com. I have a handful of Vexilars still not spoken for... this is what we are after:




 
 

2 comments:

  1. Nate
    Those are trophy bass for sure, what was the weight of that large bluegill? Are you culling those bluegill, for the sake of improving the bluegill population or just landing bluegill for fun? I was fishing a 20 acre pond the other day that has been stocked with redfin shad first, with coppernose bluegill and regular bluegill second and tiger bass third--all this happened in 2012 --we caught some of the tiger bass Friday that was release in the pond at 3" in 2012 and now they are 12 to 15" bass , the bluegill are hand size now. I haven't been able to land any coppernose as yet, but we were told these fish will be huge in the coming years. My question is how many bluegill and bass will need to be harvested in the coming years to keep the lake stable. The game and fish people told us the tiger bass will grow at a rate of 2 lbs a year if the pond is managed correctly. Thanks for sharing--- Hope you and the family have a Merry Christmas

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  2. I didn't know Illinois has such great fishing. This is a fantastic blog post. Here in New Jersey, we were hoping and even expecting to have ice before the end of the year, but it was 71 degrees today. Before the weather turned, there was safe ice on some ponds to the north, at least. Don't know that I'll be blogging on ice fishing this winter even if we do have some, since my herniated disks are giving me trouble, but I hope other guys get out. Merry Christmas & I look forward to reading more posts.

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