Went to Condie res today. I pulled the snomachine trailer thinking that I would have to sled down to the reservior but the road is open and I drove right down to the boat dock. The ice was 6-8 inches thick everywhere I drilled a hole and good ice. I targeted largemouth bass today and picked a spot where I thought they would be and got lucky and ended up getting 4 Largemouth bass and a monster perch! I fished from sunup to sundown and jigged so much my arm is tired. The bass definetly test a guys patience. It was a good day.....
Wow! Those are some nice fish, especially that perch.
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Nice fish!! There goes that spot though!! Fish like that draw in people by the hundreds.. but good to know there are some perch bigger than the 4 inchers i caught all summer and fall.
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Relax Jeremypeace, i doubt they will catch them all!
Besides, they need to take some of those perch out of there, there are thousands of them everywhere. It will help the majority of them get bigger if there are less perch in there.....
Your right just because one person can catch them doesnt mean another can. .
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Awesome. Looks like a difficult challenge to get those bass to bite in the winter.
Windriver
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very nice fish [cool]
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Cool! You definitely don't hear a lot about people ice fishing Condie. There are definitely some quality perch in there, and the bass are very healthy.
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Never caught a bass through the ice! Congrats on a very good day.
OvidCreek
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Just remember that on Condie the bass limit is (2) and none under 20 inches.
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yes, the bass limit is two and none under 20 inches. I think for largemouth this reservoir has the best bass. They are picky, I had several come up to my lure and sit there and look it over and they spent a minute or two and then just swam off. If we get any snow youll need a snomachine to get down there. Good luck[
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Condie definitely isn't a quantity bass lake, but the quality definitely makes it worthwhile. It's one of my favorite too.
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I don't know, this spring and last I hammered the bass every time I went. Lot's of 15 to 16 inch bass, which are good fish don't get me wrong but doesn't seem to have the really big bass like it use too five or six years ago but she's definitely on the upswing especially if the perch are getting back in numbers. I think they ought to change the regs maybe for a couple years to get some of the smaller bass out and give the bigger ones more room and food to grow. I had a guy bring in his ice auger for repair this morning and he said that he landed a lot of good perch and an 11 inch bluegill. Guess I know what I'm doing friday.
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You make a good point catmaster23. An odd situation exists at Condie. It is an enigma unto itself. A few years ago an Idaho Dept. of Fish and Game biologist did a study on the bass in Condie. He focused on the size of the bass in this small reservoir and found that no bass were 20" long. A few 18" bass appeared in the study but no 20" bass. Age studies were done on the bass captured in the study. It was found that the 18" bass were at the very near end of their life span. From the study it was concluded that virtually no largemouth bass in Condie would ever reach the 20" legal length limit because they die before reaching that length. He recommended to the Dept. that the legal length limit be 18" so a few of the bass could be harvested. The Dept. declined to make a regulation change. I have no problem with the regulation but I wish the Dept. would just say "No harvest of bass allowed". This would truly reflect the reality of the situation. Either way the bass catching fraternity would get their way for trophy bass fishing which is fine with me. Large bass will hopefully keep the perch, bluegill and crappie down to a respectable population so they don't over populate and stunt. The more common presence of 16" bass in Condie is probably due to a successful bass spawn several years ago. The 18 inchers have probably died off or there was an absence of a good bass spawn for a couple of springs previous to the 16" year class.
DeeCee
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I do think it's on the upswing. It's not my #1 for big bass, but I like that it's usually quiet there, and the average size is still quite good. The fish this fall were very fat and healthy and I caught many 17" and an 18". Last year I did manage several 18" and a 19", although that one was very old and scrawny looking.
I ran into a guy this spring who claimed he had just caught a 22" off a bed. I'm skeptical, but who knows. I also ran into a guy last fall who said he had caught a 20", though I didn't see that one either.
I think we'll see some more 18"+ fish turning up next year. The number of young of the year bass and panfish this fall was unreal, so food is plentiful right now. I agree though, I wouldn't mind seeing some light harvest. Maybe a slot limit like Weston would be good. I found a lot of smaller 12-14" fish as well, and cleaning out a few of them would help.
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This is a bass I caught there about 4 years ago. Haven't seen anything close to it since. Not saying that there's not a couple of them in there but I know for a fact that the size quality is not there. I really am excited to hear about the panfish upswing. When condie crashed, I noticed we weren't catching any bluegill or perch. I think the lake busted due to too many predators and not enough food. Last year I swung by there on my way through and walked to the bank and there were perch minnows everywhere. Since then the fishing has been in all reality good. I think twin could use a serious fish fry as well. Lot's of bass but for the most part under nourished.
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That fish is a hog . way to go . I can hear Condie calling my name . Curt G.
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That is a real beauty of a bass! You don't forgot catching one like that. Reservoirs/Lakes can go in cycles. In Idaho poor spring spawning conditions for bass and bluegill are the biggest limiting factors. These fish will spawn and then cold spring weather moves in and either outright kills the eggs due to low water temperature or drives the spawners guarding the nest out into deeper water. The bluegill then move in and devour the eggs. Lately I have been concerned about Twin Lakes north of Preston. When I was a kid the lake was full of bluegill and bass everywhere. These past two or three winters the ice fishing has crashed. This past summer my son and I summer fished Twin and fish were noticeably absent in the shallows around the brush. Personally I think with predator fish like bass, yellow perch and crappie in the lake, it has really hammered the bluegill population. Add two cold Springs these past two years to make poor spawning conditions for bluegill and bass and I think Twin Lakes fish population has pretty much crashed to low levels. Add high fishing pressure and it is currently in trouble as a fishery in my opinion.
Several years ago I tried to get the Idaho Dept of F and G. to introduce Red Ear or Shell Cracker sunfish into Twin since they mostly stay in the deeper water until spring spawning when they are easy to catch. This might have helped over come the high fishing pressure for bluegill on Twin Lakes. However, because it was a new introduction into Idaho they turned it down.
I am going to predict that Condie Res is going to crash in the next few years. Some bucket biologist has illegally introduced both crappie and small mouth bass into Condie. Now we have a similar situation to Twin Lakes. Namely a bunch of predatory fish such as yellow perch, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass and crappie and a few tiger muskie and then add the human predator and the bluegill are in an environment of "wolves". Hope the lake doesn't run out of fish food for the predators. I also bet you will see the bass fishery noticeably decline with everything chomping down on them.I like everyone of the fish in Condie but the mix is wrong. Hope it offers good fishing of some kind in the years to come but it may not be bass fishing. In addition smallmouth and largemouth bass rarely do well together. One usually declines while the other becomes dominant. Again, lets hope the largemouth remains the dominant one since it was designed as a largemouth trophy fishery.
DeeCee
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The thing is most fish are predatory fish as far as this conversation goes. Perch, buegill, crappie are in my opinion the baitfish in this neck of the woods. When their numbers decline, the bass have no choice but to feed on them selves exclusively. I don't think the perch and bluegill are the problem, it's the over abundance of 14 to 16 inch bass that's the real problem there. As far as muskies go, the last one I saw was six years ago while I was in a float tube, it came up and surfaced and disappeared. I would really be surprised if there where any tigers left in there.
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I actually saw tons of bass and bluegill at Twin this spring in the shallows. You may not have been shallow enough. I did much better after I ditched my float tube and waded the shallows on foot. The first day I fished it this year in mid May, I caught 50 bass in 3-4 hours. When I went back toward the end of June, I caught 50 more bass, and there were bluegill absolutely everywhere. I saw many in the 8-10" class.
The fishing was very different this year at all the waters in the area. The cold, unstable weather along with the super high water everywhere definitely changed things up. Judging by the hordes of bass and panfish fry in the shallows of every reservoir in the area this year, I think they had a pretty good spawn.
Catmaster, that's an awesome bass. How big was it? I haven't caught any that big out of Condie, but here are some at 18". There are definitely still some in there.[inline "weed bass.JPG"][inline "crank bass 18 small.JPG"][inline "crank bass small.JPG"][inline "18 small.JPG"][inline "evening bass small.JPG"] [inline "big fat night bass small.JPG"]
Here is the 19" I caught, but as I mentioned before, it didn't look healthy. I bet it was a really nice looking fish at one point though.[inline "old bass small.jpg"]
As far as largemouth and smallmouth doing poorly together, while that may be the case in a small western reservoir like Condie, they do very well together back east where I grew up. They often kind of take up different niches in the body of water, but other times you will find them in the same areas. I wouldn't worry about the smallmouth out competing the largemouth at Condie though. The fry need different things for optimal recruitment. Condie just doesn't offer the right habitat. I didn't even catch any there this year either, and I put a lot of hours into that place.
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