Fished Echo today. 8+ inches of good ice but the edges are soft so be careful getting on. Fished near the dam on the east side, but not right at the dam. Best fishing was in 40 feet of water, within a few inches of the bottom. The best bait was perch parts. Fishing was pretty good over all. As usual, bites came in bursts as the schools of moved through but fairly consistent. We started with night crawlers but that got little action. Size ranged from 5 inches to 9 inches for the perch. I also brought up 2 browns. One was 22 1/2 inches but very skinny, while the other was 15 inches with good proportions. Saw very few fish on the sonar other than the perch on the bottom. Both browns were caught right on the bottom too. Between the two of us we iced somewhere around 40 fish, but we didn’t really count. There was some wind through the morning, but not really too cold. Saw about 20 people on the ice when we left sometime around noon. Saw 1 other skinny rainbow caught. Most people were catching perch. We did not go to Rockport to check the ice there.
Matador, good talking to you and D. I had about the same day as you two. Fast perch action (some up to 9") some bows around 20ft. (nice fat ones 17-20 in) and a good brown (21") down deep, the brown had four perch in it. I was fishing 47 ft. The larger perch had minnows in them as well. Very good ice!