visited charleston this AM. Light snow. No safe ice. The ice has retreated about ten feet beyond the launch break in the willows, allowing for launching of small boats. Lots of surface action from fish out in the open water along the ice line. Couldn’t cast that far with my ice poles.
I moved to the Charleston bridge, where I spoke with three fisherman there. Slow fishing, one rainbow on floating bairt in several hours.
No one ventured on the ice near the island today that I could see.
I stopped at Rainbow Bay, where four fisherman were on the ice. One had caught four rainbow and a brown, fishing in 9.5 feet of water with white jig and wax worm about three cranks off the bottom. His partner with similar rig had caught nothing fishing a few feet to his side. Two gentlemen about 40 feet away in 12 feet of water had two rainbows for their mornings labors. I dropped various bait over the next hour, including wax worm, night crawler and floating bait. Took one 13 inch rainbow home from my efforts with floating bait, fishing 18 inches off the bottom at 10 feet depth.
Sounded the water with vexilar at 10,18,24,28 and 30 feet. The only fish I marked was the one that I caught at the ten foot depth.
Ice at rainbow bay was soft but adequate along the edges. 3-4 inches of slush and new snow thinly frozen over about 6 inches of more solid ice awaited in the bay. Overall safe today, but close enough to marginal that it could change quickly.
As I drove home I could see a fisherman on the ice on the Wallsburg arm, but I did not stop to check the ice there.