Warmwater Fishing starting in central Iowa!

The local weather Saturday (March 5, 2016) was in low 30's. Slush formed around my rod eyelets. I caught a couple trout, and worked hard to fool a half-dozen Bluegills (different waters).
Sunday temperatures reached the mid 60's! The fish LOVED IT as much as I did.
It was still slow, methodical fishing (microjig under an indicator), but in 3 hours I managed a dozen Bluegills, 5 Crappies, and 4 Largemouth Bass. Biggest bass measured 18.75" and gave an excellent account of itself.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...pskrunts5n.jpg

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...ps678mtqjw.jpg

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...pscevqy10j.jpg

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...psfzjkhfbi.jpg

Some nice fish!

Great way to start the season! Very nice fish.

Jim Smith

21 fish in 3 hours doesn't sound like a slow day to me!

7 fish per hour!? I'd take that most any day...

Way to go David............Crappies yet!
Although Spring seems to be arriving early here in Ontario, the lakes are still ice covered and unsafe to be on, big Steelhead rivers running too high and fast to even go there and very few fishing opportunities because seasons are closed until end of April unless you targeting Steelhead in some of the big rivers having open all year fishing opportunities.
We are not quite as fortunate as our American neighbours and therefore must wait until seasons open or lakes become ice free..............then I'm going Crappie fishing!

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Originally Posted by waskeyc

21 fish in 3 hours doesn't sound like a slow day to me!

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Prairieschooner

7 fish per hour!? I'd take that most any day...

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Well....good point. It almost matched my 10-year average of 7.5 fish/hour.
Today's flyfishing trip during lunch was a bit faster. I fished for almost exactly 30 minutes and landed 4 Bluegills and 15 Crappies. (a rate of 38 fish/hour) Missed a fair few as well. :) Today was about 20 degrees colder than yesterday (50 instead of 70), but the sun came out for a bit.

Dave Parker....I hear you! Your open-water season is definitely shorter than ours. We share that deplorable time at the beginning and end of each season when the lakes are frozen over, but the ice isn't safe. The trade-off is you have a longer ice-fishing season, and probably experience lower fishing pressure overall on your waters. Lets both move to Florida where the water never freezes?

Got a few fish last night.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...pscbdbvteo.jpg

We've had kind of an up and down early spring here in Georgia. 70 degrees and beautiful one day, followed by 40 degrees and rain. It seemed that every weekend was time for cold rain. That said, I took some time off yesterday to start my season and while it was a bit slow, the bass were hitting much better than the bream. I ended up with around 24 fish, mainly LM bass with a couple of nice sized bream mixed in. Now that I've started the season, I'm ready to go every day if this darn thing called work would stop interfering with my plans.

Jim Smith

Jim,
What pattern(s) were your bass most interested in?

Dave, My absolute go-to pattern for warm water and cold water rivers is a black mohair yarn leech, either beadhead or not. I tie them on size 10 2xl hooks for bream and size 6 or 4 for bass. That said, the bass take the size 10 leech patterns as well as the larger patterns, especially in the early spring. My first fish of the year was just a tad smaller than the bass you show in your photos. I'm guessing she was about 17-18 inches long. I have tons of other patterns that I take out with me, but it in the spring time, I never seem to find a reason to switch patterns.

Jim Smith

Thanks, Jim. VERY interesting. I had noticed in past years that I seem to catch big bass on smaller patterns early in the year. Our water temperatures are probably in the mid-40's and climbing right now. Not sure if that has any bearing on it. I tossed some big patterns during lunch this week, and didn't get any interest at all. Conventional wisdom was that early season bass want a bigger meal, because the available forage (sunfish/baitfish) would be nearly a year old by now. But maybe they are targeting nymphs and leeches because they expend less energy catching those when the water is this cold? And then by mid-April last year, the bass were hitting the bigger stuff.

Jim, you've yet to steer me wrong, so I added a black mohair leech to my fly rotation recently. It has worked very well! It has caught crappies, bluegills, and hybrid sunfish....and some bass too.

Our water temps still haven't warmed up much yet. The little microjig is still inexplicably catching some really nice bass in the past week or so.
This one was an 18.5-incher:
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...psb9zpfxs3.jpg

And here's a 20-incher! Look how tiny the microjig is compared to this fish's mouth!:
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...psdvwd5nvo.jpg

I put on a a larger chartreuse craft fur baitfish pattern late in the evening after catching that 20-incher, and caught a couple smaller bass on it.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...pswdpb6utm.jpg

19" bass on a chartreuse craft fur baitfish:
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...psjeyzz3f5.jpg

18.5" bass on a microjig:
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...pshwsxvqsn.jpg

Also caught some hybrid sunfish, crappies, and Pumpkinseed Sunfish:
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...psnpoezq0d.jpg

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...pshz3fs1ro.jpg

And bluegills:
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...ps1ycclpqe.jpg

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...psbh1n1p5b.jpg