Last Day of Illinois Ice Fishing?

Well, Sunday was a completely different day weather-wise from Saturday. It was cold, windy and rainy...At this point we knew the upcoming weather forecast was gonna destroy the ice, so we hit it hard one last time despite the elements....

Before I get into some more fish pictures, Chef Todd got back from the Schaumburg show and showed me this picture of a box of tungsten ice fishing jigs......can anyone guess how much that box of jigs retailed for??? If you guessed less than $20,000 you are way wrong....If you guessed less than $30,000 your wrong again....That box has $37,000 worth of tungsten in it.....


So anyhow, we caught less fish and took less pics Sunday, but mostly because we didnt run any tipups and it was miserable to take photos, but some of the bluegills were just too stinkin big not to document into the pages of this fishing blog....

Oh yeah, in the morning I took a group of guys over to a big well managed lake near Canton. We only fished that lake for about 45 minutes, but we scoped it out and quickly found what we were after. The bluegills were feeding on a 12' deep ledge right off a shallow hump that was also adjacent to some deep water....



We also caught this nice bass while bluegill jigging:


So then I went back to my lake to finish off the day, or better yet until the weather finished off us...Some of the guys lasted till about 2 pm, but most had enough of the wind and rain by about noon...





Chef even got in on the action....disregard the date on his camera, its off by 4 1/2 years...






Why there is a ladder on the ice I have no clue...just saw it in this pic below and thought what in the world? Dont remember seeing it on Sunday??


A couple smaller walleyes on the bluegill jigs:


One nice surprise of the day was this big rainbow trout...for whatever reason the trout havent been biting nearly as good as usual, but finally someone landed a big one!!


So there it is, A 5 day ice fishing season has come n gone...I have no hope for safe ice yet this season, everything has opened and there just doesnt seem to be enough cold days left to string together safe ice again......Crazy Crazy Crazy how I can go from back to back 40 day seasons to back to back less than 5 day seasons....I guess I will just have to see what next year has in store.......

Oh yeah, I will need to scratch my ice fishing itch so I am now looking at heading up to Green Bay or Sturgeon Bay to chase after some whitefish...anybody been up there to do that? I have always wanted to give it a try and since there is no ice here, now seems as good a time as any!!!