Deep Water Ice

Today was the day that another check mark was made on my to-do list this winter.  I had not fished through the ice on Brushy Creek for about five years.  In the past the Team Extreme Ice Tournament Trail visited this lake each year, so I got used to fishing it a few weeks each ice season.  I had good memories of the lake, and the endless possibilities that it holds.  Popular ice fishing species in this lake include bluegills, crappies, perch and walleyes.
This lake stays under the radar as a top lake in Iowa to ice fish.  It holds nice sized fish for the all the species I listed, but they don't come easy.  This lake is full, and I mean FULL of structure.  Trees all over the lake, rock piles, points, creek channels, long and deep coves as well as a huge main lake area.  It was quite overwhelming when I began to ice fish, even though I had a good understanding of the lake from bass fishing.  It is a large lake for Iowan's standards, and then all the structure! 
Myself and three friends took the trip west to see how the lake was doing after a half of decade.  I remember the lake having some very nice crappie, decent bluegills and always heard of nice walleyes being caught too, although I had never.  The lake did not disappoint on this day, and it was a good reunion.  The four of us found a really nice little school of bluegills on a main lake point, several different schools of perch, topping out about ten inches, and we followed a school of crappie around from most of the afternoon.  Catching those suspended crappies on the Vexilar FLX28 is quite a treat.  It truly is like a video game!  It was a great day of getting some fish for a meal and practicing catch and release.  The quality of bluegills, in the one school anyway were very nice, nothing like I had experienced in year past.  The crappies that we found in about forty feet of water were not the great quality that I remember, but were good keepers.  Having a smooth reel like the Quantum Drive made getting up and down to the deep crappies an easy task.  I relied heavy on the smooth drag system to bring the fish up slowly, which was necessary for keeping them alive to release.  The larger perch were a nice surprise that added to our cleaning tables. 
I doubt that I will get back to the lake this winter, but I think we will making that trip once again next season.

A nice mess of keepers for the four of us to share