Lake Cornelia Yellow Bass Crash

Lake Cornelia is another lake in Iowa that had fallen from popular places to fish.  The culprit...Yellow Bass.  As short as 5 years ago this lake produced panfish for the taking and provided anglers a nice place to fish year-round.  This is not the case anymore.  This lake is just one of the new problems Yellow Bass have created around the state.  For those of you that do not know, yellow bass can and will destroy smaller lakes that they end up in.  At no time should anyone, for any reason put yellow bass into any body of water.  Anglers can help curb the spread of yellow bass by enjoying a meal of them after you catch them.  They are good to eat, and they fight like crazy when you try to drag them up a 6-inch ice hole.  They have become one of my favorite fish to hunt down during the ice fishing season, and recently they brought me to the Lake Cornelia Yellow Bass Crash.

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This ice tournament was put together by Randy Bieghler of the Des Moines area.  The events has no doubt raised awareness about the dangers of yellow bass in smaller Iowa lakes.  February 16th marked the third of such events at this lake put on by the Central Iowa Icesticks group.  This event was like no other ice tournament I have ever participated in, as the goal was to catch as many yellow bass as possible.  Typically ice tournaments have a set amount of fish to bring in, however this was a race against time and all the yellow bass in Lake Cornelia we could find.  David Gissel and I set out to the deeper part of the lake, like 90% of everyone in the event.  We started drilling and immediately located schools of fish on the Vexilars.  They were not shy, and we started to catch yellow after yellow.  We quickly realized there were two distinct sizes of yellows in this lake, small and micro size.  The typical yellow bass baits worked, as these fish were hungry and have a lot of competition to get their daily allowance of food.  Jigs, spoons, it didn't really seem to matter, it also didn't seem to matter where we drilled holes.  In each new group of holes we drilled we found yellows of both sizes.  We continued moving and caching the whole day.  As mentioned, it was a race to see how many yellows you could catch.  I stuck to the same combo all day long, a Jason Mitchell Dead Meat Stick with a Quantum Drive reel.  This combo is ideal for moving and chasing yellows.  The line flows off the size 10 reel to quickly get your bait back down to the active yellows.  Another key to this setup is the large eyelets on the rod, they do not ice up as badly as other rods with smaller eyelets.  It is an awesome combo, especially for hunting yellow bass.  We were able to fill two 5-gallon buckets full of yellow bass, we had no idea on how many we had, and we certainly didn't count.  We weighed in 49.78# of fish, which got us 2nd place.  It was a great way to spend the day, although the size of fish were small it was fun to chase them.  Several kids also participated in the event, and thanks to the sponsors each child walked away with about $50 in merchandise.

The tournament as a whole weighed in just over 498 pounds of yellow bass.  The final count by the Central Iowa Icesticks was 5,621 yellow bass removed from the lake during this 5 hour tournament.  Quite a feat by the teams that participated, although it is a small dent in the population it brought awareness of the troubling yellow bass in small Iowa lakes and helped to get almost of 6,000 of them out of the lake.  Well done Randy on an effort to help improve the panfish populations at Lake Cornelia.

So, what happened to the near 500 pounds of fish, they were all given to the SOAR Raptor organization.  They will use the fish to feed the many birds they keep and rehabilitate.  You could say this event was a success all around.   

2020 Yellow Bass Bonanza

Iowa's largest tournament over much of the past decade has occurred at Clear Lake in the month of February.  As the world of ice fishing has expanded over the past ten years, anglers from all over the Midwest come to Clear Lake to chase the famous Yellow Bass through the ice.  This year the attendance was down to about 190 two person teams, but still the biggest event by far.  The population of larger yellow bass in Clear Lake is definitely down, so I assume many teams took a break from attending this event.  In past few years the number of teams has been over 300.  No matter the number of teams the group at Clear Lake Bait and Tackle put on quite a show.  It all kicks off at the Saturday evening Yellow Bass Bonanza Bash.  All anglers are treated to a meal and dessert, each year I am amazed at the quality of food they provide.  It is great to see anglers from all over the state and catch up guys I only see once or twice a year.  Thousands of dollars of prizes are given away and the rules are discussed the for event the following day. 

Sunday morning was an anxious one for me, although this is a fun event with a good friend, our time on Saturday was limited to only three hours of fishing due to a main gas line break on my snowmachine.  It is a good thing that my partner, Jacy Large is a "can fix everything" kind of guy.  We located a new hose in Mason City and managed to find some yellow bass...the only problem was that we found one area that had them, not multiple.  Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket!  I set the GPS track to our waypoint and at 9am we were off.  As I followed the line to our starting position I knew that catching the limit of 30 yellow bass would not come easy today, and if a team could catch 30 yellows, no matter the size would end up towards the top.  Our goal each year is to make the top 25, this year was going to be tough.  We rolled up on our spot and I began to drill holes, as I was drilling hole #3, Jacy was already pulling up the first yellow bass of the day!  A big sigh of relief fell over me as I knew at at least a few were still around.  As I walked a few paces to drill hole number 4 I asked Jacy how many he could see on Vexilar, he response was, "a lot more than that one".  I began to drill hole #4 and as I completed the hole my drill snapped in half at the chuck.  I was in udder disbelief.  Our auger, our only auger was broken...with only 4 holes.  Talk about high and then coming to a crashing low.  There was only one thing I could do...I grabbed my Vexilar and spoon rod and started fishing.  Jacy and I had about 15 yellows on the ice in the first few minutes and then they calmed down.  In the past, this is when I would get the auger and drill another 10-15 holes, but not today.  We grinded it out in those four holes picking one up every now and again.  Luckily a near-by team cut some holes around us only a few yards away.  Once they fished those holes and left to another location we moved over there.  More yellows were waiting for us.  We ended up getting on another flow of fish and they were cooperating.  It was certainly a blessing, and a good lesson to always bring two augers!

We ended up catching about 50 yellow bass and 5 white bass on the day in those dozen or so holes.  We weighed in 8 really nice yellows, all in that 10-11 inch range and the other 22 were yellows that were measuring around that 6-7 inch mark.  As for what was working to catch those fish; locating and reacting to the fish on the Vexilar is key each and every time out on the ice.  I was using a 36in Jason Mitchell Dead Meat stick paired up with a Quantum Drive reel.  A gold Kastmaster spoon or the Clear Lake Bait and Tackle Special Edition Pinhead Minnow were the only two baits I threw at them. 

Looking back at the event, he jumped several hurdles but just kept on fishing.  With the cards we were dealt (and not bringing a 2nd auger) we were both thrilled to end up in the top 25, as we set out to do each year.  As they handed out prizes to teams we both realized that our weight of 8.97# was going to be a lot closer to the top than we expected.  We ended up in 9th place this year, a nice plaque for the wall, and as fate would have it...a new Nils Auger.  A great weekend in the end, and already looking forward to hitting the ice next weekend!

Our biggest for the event: just over 10.5 inches
 and weighed right at .70 pounds