Harrier Lake - First Weekend of March

I usually fish with several members of DuPage Angler on any given weekend.  This weekend's fishing was discussed on a Facebook group starting last Monday.  All the active ice anglers have a Facebook group and we talk fishing, ice fishing, more fishing, and probably something about fishing too.  This week we decided by committee that we would be fishing Harrier Lake in the DuPage County Forest Preserve District.

I fished Harrier earlier this ice season.  I didn't have very good luck at all so I was a bit uneasy going back.  I only caught two bluegills last time I was there and I hadn't read many reports from the lake this season. Still a bunch of my fellow DA Ice-Heads want to go, I go.

Left to Right: SteeliePete, JC1Crappies, CrankinKing

Left to Right: BrimReaper, SteeliePete

I found some of my DA friends quickly enough as they were the large group on the ice as well as the only ones on the ice.   There were already holes drilled and fishing happening but very few fish had been caught.  I put the battery on my ION auger and started to make swiss cheese of the ice. drilled a tennis court sized grid of holes through 20+ inches of ice.  My flasher showed me my holes were above 10-15 feet of water but there wasn't much activity at all on the flasher's dial.  

I saw a concrete drain on the shore and drilled holes toward it hoping to find a hole, edge, weed edge, or something that could hold fish.  I flashed the holes and stopped when I found what I thought was an 11 foot deep spot with a foot and a half of weed growth on the bottom.  The thing was these weeds were moving!

I grabbed the custom ultra-light I made last season.  It had an orange colored Fiskas tungsten jig tied on the 2# test ice line.  Two red and two natural colored spikes were impaled on the jig's hook before it was dropped down to the moving "bottom".  This "bottom" came up to take a look at my jig!

That "bottom" was a perch!  Not much of a perch but it was a species I don't usually catch so I was excited to see it come up for a picture.  That and I beat the skunk with this perch so the pressure to catch fish was officially off!  I wonder if....

Yup!  More "bottom" perch bit my jig!

This fish hit my dead-stick rod.  It's a light-power rod I made that I set up with a slip-float, a split-shot, and a pink Custom Jigs and Spins Diamond Jig.  I managed to rig a dead-stick up between the perch I was catching and releasing. 

This was the chunkiest of the perch I'd catch today.  In all I caught 8-10 perch with no other species mixed in.  Today was totally a perch day.  I enjoyed that!  I enjoyed catching a species I don't see often in my area of northern Illinois.  I enjoyed besting my personal best perch with the one in the gloved-photo above.  (Still not huge but better than my first perch ever)

More than 20" of ice in March.  I'm wondering if we'll be able to fish on top of the water up to May?  

May-be

Harrier Lake Last Day on Ice?

If we have to lose ice fishing until next year I'd hang it up happily after my day out on Harrier Lake this past Saturday.

Harrier Lake is part of the Pratt's Wayne Woods Forest Preserve in the DuPage County Forest Preserve District.  Harrier is unique in the system as a catch and release only lake.  This allows fish go grow and reproduce and sustain their own balance while giving the sport fisherman a great place to go catch a variety of species.

I met Pondboy, JC1Crappies, and Rocknfish from the DuPage Angler forums in the parking lot as soon as the gates were opened.  We parked, said our hellos and unloaded gear.

We were working off of a report given to Pondboy from a friend of his.  His friend had a great day catching walleye at Harrier last Sunday night.  Another DuPage Angler member JTC24 caught a fantastic 18" walleye a week or two ago at Harrier.  We went to a spot off a point on the lake and started drilling holes.

It was slow going.  I decided to turn on my Vexilar Double Vision underwater camera to see what was happening in holes we deemed interesting.  

I saw a perch.  Neat!  A perch.  I haven't caught one of those yet.  I hope I'll get one to bite today.

Nothing looked good and that was causing us to worry.  Pondboy walked around and talked up the other anglers.  We would tip them off if we found a bite and several said they'd do the same.  We got our first spot by way of one of these tips.

Quick holes were drilled and bait was deadsticked and jigged near bottom.  JC1Crappies scored first with walleye.

I got my Vexilar camera in line with my holes quickly by using the compass heading generated by the camera.  That enabled me to see my minnow and my jig on the video screen.  I switched jig colors to a more beige tungsten Fiskas jig.  Dropping it to the bottom I saw walleye ZIP across the screen and slam the wax worm and jig.  Camera fishing is cool!

More walleye came up for a picture.  I think the group caught over ten in total.

Mid-jig I heard a voice asking us to emerge from our shelters and bring our fishing licences. This wasn't the first county parks officer we would see today.  All of us were fishing legally and never mind proving it.  A quick chat and we said our goodbyes to the officer and got back to fishing.

Around 11:30 AM the light switch was flipped and magically the walleye vanished.  We were off to scout for a new spot.

If we were lucky we could follow the walleye.  We guessed going shallow near an underwater island would either find the walleye or find panfish to catch.  In five feet of water we found green weeds, decent light penetration, and schools of bluegill that came around every minute to three minutes almost like clockwork.

I shot this short video to show what it was like.  If I would have had a jig in the water it would have been in line with the bluegill in the background.  It would have been a safe bet that I would have caught that fish but I was using both hands to keep the cell phone steady for the video.

And now the bluegill pictures.

We were slamming bluegills in all sizes.  Some nicer sized gills came though and Pondboy or I would announce their presence on screen and on sonar.  predictably thirty to forty five seconds later the other shelter would see bluegills show up under their hole.  

Pondboy and Rocknfish had to leave to go to a family function.  As we were talking about it being time for them to go I got a text from JC1Crappies that he was on his way back with his son Brendon.

Two left, two more arrived and we kept catching bluegills.  Brendon bounced between my shelter and JC1's.  Catch a fish in one shelter, leave to go catch in the other.

Brendon had caught the bluegill in the picture above when we both saw a perch on the video screen  eyeing the jig I had left dangling.  Would I catch my first perch?  Yes, yes I would.

It was cute and pretty tiny.  Not a keeper even if we could have kept it.  It had the cool orange fins on the bottom and the stripes, add that to my list of species caught.

The sky was taking on a rosy hue in the west.  JC and I decided we should move closer to the parking lot to our morning spot.  Walleye like all fish follow their forage.  Our bet was that the conditions in the evening were similar to the conditions in the morning.  That would bring the walleye back to that area.  It did.

It was now almost dark.  We packed up our gear and dragged it to our cars where we found the Forest Preserve truck waiting for us to get off the lake.  

I fished from park open to close, dawn to dusk, all on 6-8 inches of ice.  Personal totals for the day were around 15 walleye, over 30 bluegill, and a perch.  Like I said, if that had to be my last day ice fishing for Winter 2013 I would pack up my gear happily!

Secretly, I'm hoping ice stays safe for one more trip out...but don't tell that to the open water guys.