Fishing Forum

My brother and I headed up to Mantua this morning for our first time. We were hoping to find some Bluegills. We made a quick stop at Cracker Barrel and ate some good food. With full bellies and a coffee buzz we finished our drive to the lake. When we passed the Walmart in Brigham it was +15 but I am sure it was colder at the lake. Hardly any wind and not too many people...recipe for a good day on the ice.

We headed pretty much straight out from the restrooms about 150 yards. The ice was about 7" with some of that being frozen slush. Had a few heart stoppers breaking through the top layer of frozen slush... always gets me. We fished that area about 1 hour with lots of fish interested on sonar but only 1 Bow for me and 1 for my bro. We tried many jigs and tipped them different things but not a lot of success. Depth was about 12'.

We decided to move. We headed north west about 200 yards and drilled 5 or so holes. Fished that for about another hour and ended up with this keeper bass. Depth was 8-15'.
[inline "mantua bass.jpg"]

Not satisfied with our trip thus far, we moved deeper to see what we could find. We headed east toward the middle of the lake. Lots of holes were drilled (with a hand auger) and decided to set up camp in about 17' of water. First drop I landed this dink perch...
[inline "mantua bass and perch.jpg"]

We stayed there the rest of the day. I landed one more perch on the dinksters eye.
[inline 0102111244-00.jpg]

Threw him back and kept grinding. Lots of action on the sonar but the fish were shy. A group of aggressive Bows came through for about an hour and started dive bombing the perch on the bottom. It was fun watching it in the sonar. I caught 10 Bows, most of them around 13". I kept 1 and threw the rest back
[inline 0102111332-00.jpg]

When he came out of the hole he was puking up baby perch. His mouth was full of them and so was his belly.
[inline 0102111729-00.jpg]
We decided to head home even though the action was good and so was the weather. We had a long drive back to Stansbury though. Great day on the ice but wish I could have got into the Bluegills. I will definitely have to plan another trip.

Snowmobiles were running around so the ice is plenty safe. Hope you all had a good and safe trip this weekend.

Later,
Chris
[signature]

Hey thanks for the post and pics. Good to hear about some success from Mantua. It seemed like it was slowing down a lot but catching 10 bows in a day sounds like it's pretty hot! I'm headed up there in the morning and was worried about getting skunked. How early did you get there? When I went on New Years eve it slowed down a lot when the sun came over the mountain.
[signature]

I got there around 8ish. I would not call it hot. It was only good at the last spot we moved to. We fished till around 2:30. It was a grind catching those fish and my brother only caught 2 total. Good luck in the morning and hope you get into them.
[signature]

For my new years resolution I decided that instead of lurking in the back ground I would participate actively on this site [sly]. So here we go.. My dad, brother inlaw and I went to mantua on saturday1/1/11 ( what better way to start the year off than with a nice cold icefishing trip!!) we arrived at the crack of 10:30 and fished till about 4:30 between my dad and I we caught about 60 fish, my brother inlaw was having a hart time getting the hookset right on the fish. We were hunting the Gills over on the east side of the lake, and it seemed for the most part that most people were catching them. there wasn't any tremendous size to any of them, the bigger ones were in the range of 7" most were about 5" almost all gills. despite my inlaws hooksetting issues he did manage a little basslet [crazy]. The bites were super lite, they barely moved the indicator, and we found that we needed to use about half a waxie to get them to take it in for a hookset, otherwise they would wait for the mana from heaven to descend down to them, and they would freely eat our hooks bare. All in all it was a fun day on the ice! It was great to see all the families out there with their kids catching the gills.
[signature]

Welcome aboard! Glad to hear about your success at Mantua. I have had pretty good success in a dozen or so trips this year so far. I have landed a few nice gills, biggest being about 9 1/2 inches. But most were in the 5"-7" range.
[signature]

Cool pics! It is nice to see so many reports about people chasing bluegill. I chase them all year along with crappie and other warm water fishies. That last pic with the dead perchlet pile is sweeeeeeeeeet []
[signature]

+1
Welcome. Thanks for the post, and the sub-posts. Good info.

I too and intrigued on that last pic. Could ya stick a hook through them little pukes and pull in another big'n?!

One of the perch I caught was exploding with snails when she gave her all to the course of the food chain.