Posted by OZ from 24.4.252.122 on February 17, 2001 at 16:33:13:
Fished in the NWMA contest from 08:30 - 11:30. I ended up tied for 1st with 3.1 lbs of bluegills. I believe I weighed in 30 fish. I also caught two crappie, but they were about 1'' under the minimum size(9''). Bite was extremly slow for all anglers for almost the 1st hour. Fish seemed to be about 1' off the bottom and running small. Snuggled up in my shanty and at about 10:00 I started getting more bites, but only two fish. Then about 10:15 it was fish, fish, fish. Non stop action for a good 45 minutes. By this time the fish were sitting on the bottom(12 - 14' water), and although they were hitting light, they were hitting! Then from 11:00 - 11:30 I caught maybe three fish, although I had about three - four times more bites. Not sure what others were doing since I was shacked up, but did hear some shanties being dragged here and there. I was using spikes, and I almost positive that is what almost all the others were using. A vertical presentation seemed to be preffered, as I was getting hits on both my rat finkee and marmooshka(sp). I ended up catching all mine on the marmooshka as most fish ran too small to hook with a rat finkee. Did mangage to catch maybe five or six fish that ran 6 - 8'', quite a few 5'', and a slew of 3 - 4''.
Water temp taken about 8' down showed 32 degrees. Ice was a good 12'' thick. Very little shoreline melting, and where it was, the water was only about 2'' deep. Thank god DuPage doesn't use Cook County logic, otherwise the lake would have been closed down. Don't want anyone falling thru into two inches of water :0)