Friday

It was unbelievably cold all weekend,  the 60’s, in July? Its unheard of! We got down to the Queen dock at the Marina around 6:30pm. The cabin cruiser we stayed on, ‘the TimTation’ is owned by my friend’s uncle, who was spending the weekend working on his new dry docked houseboat. Its over 60 feet long and has been completely gutted and is in the process of being entirely redone. After checking out the boat and drinking a few beers we went ahead and went back to the dock to night fish. We fished until we ran out of worms. I caught several bluegill and 6 catfish. None of my catfish were more than 1.5 lbs.  My friend hooked into the biggest carp I have seen in a while. It must’ve been 20-30 lbs. Its head was as big as mine! He tried to reel it in a little too quickly and it snapped his line after it broke the surface. He did pull in a4-5 lber. He held the pole and I got belly down on the dock and grabbed it by its lip to put it out.  We drank about 3 bottles of wine between both of us and our new friend Norm, before passing out in the Cruiser.

Saturday

Saturday morning my friend and I woke up around 8 AM, went to grab some breakfast and then headed back to the lake. Apparently his uncle needed some help removing a generator from the new houseboat. They had the bright idea to have my friend and I stand on top of a cube truck with ropes to ’stabilize’ it, while they lifted it over the side of the boat. Realizing this was a recipe for disaster they opted to instead just cut away part of the railing and use some rollers to get the generator to the truck.

After avoiding that disaster I went back to the docks to fish some more. I caught another catfish and a few bluegills before getting called back up to the dock because they were about to launch the boat. I had tried to use some cranks and spinners but the water was fairly murky and I didn’t have any luck.

The boat launch gave me a chance to start drinking. I had a few beers while they slipped it into the water. It only had bubbles coming up from one place, but we think that place was actually the tires. There was a leak however, from where my friend’s Uncle drilled screws through the bottom of the boat! Eventually they pulled it back out, grinded off the screws and patched it with some boat epoxy and told us it was about time to go boating.

While we were watching them put the boat in the water I saw 2 guys cleaning fish at the courtesy station. That had caught a lot of catfish. They had 2-3 in the 5lb range and a bunch of 2lbers. They said they were fishing up near honey creek.

While we waited for them to show up back at the docks to go boating we had a little contest to see who could catch more bluegill. We probably caught around 60-70 in about an hour while waiting. We could catch them at will on that dock. We went out boating and drinking for several hours on the cruiser. Everyone got extremely drunk, once I hit land again I tried fishing again but the wine would let me have none of it. I almost passed out with my hand on the line, laying on my back on the dock, but my friend grabbed me and put me on the floor of the boat.

Some of the Catfish from the first night

Sunday

We woke up around 9am and just lazed around. I found an extremely comfy lawn chair and sat in there with my line in the water for about an hour before catching the biggest catfish of the weekend. It was still less than 2 lbs so don’t get excited, but it was fun to catch.

Around noon we packed up our stuff and headed back to Des Moines after saying thanks and goodbye to our hosts.

The "World's Largest Bullhead" statue was constructed in 1958 by Carl Frick

After years of planning and community involvement, Crystal Lake is at the end of its long road back to becoming the North Iowa treasure it once was. “It used to be one of the great little fishing spots in North Iowa, and soon it will be back to that level,” said Tom Haan, head of the Hancock County Board of Conservation.

The lake has gone through an extensive dredging and renovation process that has been in the works since around 1991, when fundraising efforts began throughout the community. The process has taken nearly 20 years to complete, but is finally reaching its end.

Lake classification reports in 1980 and 1991 identified Crystal Lake as a high priority candidate for lake restoration, and it was placed on the impaired waters list in 1998. Crystal Lake is one of Iowa’s 34 natural glacial lakes and the 269-acre lake has been suffering from organic enrichment due to sediment build up. The lake had been crippled by high phosphorus and nitrogen levels for years before the dredging process began.

A sediment pond was also constructed near the lake and it is estimated to help reduce sediment and runoff delivery to by upwards of 20%.

Before the project began the lake measured just six feet at its deepest point, and through the utilization of a tier effect plan during dredging, the lake now measures 22 feet at its optimal depth. The tier system has greatly amplified the overall volume of the lake, providing waters that measure 22, 18, 12, and 8 feet respectively depending on location.

The estimated $3 million dollar dredging project got underway in the fall of 2006 and was aimed at removing over 1.1 million cubic yards of sediment. A major goal of the project was to restore the lake to more natural depths in support of recreation and to provide a better environment for aquatic life. The dredging was completed in 2007, which effectively removed Crystal Lake from the impaired waters list, however other problems still remained.

During the flood of 1993, an invasion of carp began which led to water clarity issues among other problems. The lake had seen a similar carp overtaking during the early 1980’s, and the fish population was renovated to promote a healthier environment for aquatic life and more appealing sport fishing. Following the dredging, plans were made to once again renovate the fish population.

During the dredging process, the lake was dropped 18 – 24 inches, providing a seal from the West Fork of the Iowa River which headwaters in Crystal Lake.

This seal helped bar a chemical agent from entering the river that was released into the lake during the fall of 2008 in order to kill off the entire fish population.

Over the two decades since the last fish renovation high levels of nutrients and resultant algae had led to periodic low levels of oxygen at the bottom of the lake. This led to the aquatic community of the lake being dominated by species tolerant of low oxygen conditions, like bullhead and carp.

Other more desirable game fish, like bass and catfish, suffer from impaired spawning and reproduction in low oxygen conditions and populations started to decline in the lake.

Also of concern for county and DNR officials were the effects the carp were having on water quality.  The DNR started a stocking regiment earlier this year and has introduced several species of fish back into the waters.

Throughout the spring officials have released northern fry, catfish, bluegill and bass. All the fish were released at a rate of 100 fish per acre, or 269,000 fish per species.

Plans are being considered to stock the lake with crappie as well.

Now all that is left for Crystal Lake is to wait for the fall when the fish will reach a reasonable size to catch, with ideal fishing conditions being established by next summer as fish reach their optimal size.

Later this year the DNR will conduct fishing surveys to check the progress of the aquatic population through utilizing electric shock techniques to stun the fish, capture, and then weigh them.

“We hope people enjoy the lake and take the necessary precautions to help keep it clean,” said Kurt Meek, a fisheries technician for the DNR. “Users should take special attention to cleaning boats and propellers, along with abstaining from introducing other varieties of fish, those kind of efforts would help substantially.”

The lake is prepared to stay at a reasonable level of cleanliness, and a small outlet structure has been renovated to prevent undesirable fish, like carp, from re-entering the lake population ever again.

The local community has the potential to benefit from the lake once again returning to its place among North Iowa’s great fishing locations, and projections estimate that over $400,000 in fishing related revenues could be added to the local economy.

The lake rests beside a 130-acre DNR owned campground, beach, park, and disk golf course that is maintained by the Hancock County Conservation Board and hosts approximately 14,000 visitors annually.

Walker Johnson Park

I’ve started using google maps to find places to fish in Des Moines. That led me to discover this fishin hole that is actually rather close to my home, right behind the Walker Johnson Park Softball Fields.  The fishing here wasn’t very good. But could be in a few years if it doesn’t completely freeze. The pond itself is barely an acre and surrounded in thick vegetation. Which makes it pretty hard to run a crank bait when theres 6 ft of lily pads and other crap on the water. There were a TON of frogs here. If you wanted to catch some frogs I would send you here. Also a good place to grab some bait before going out catfishing. You could probably get 20 of the fish I caught in about 20 minutes. They were so small to land them I didn’t actually hook them, I just let them close their mouth on my hook and as I pulled them out of the water I pulled them over the shore, so they would go flying off my hook and onto the grass.

]]> http://www.bigbassfisher.com/2009/07/01/fishing-trip-04-walker-johnson-park/feed/ 0 http://www.bigbassfisher.com/2009/06/30/fishing-trip-03-mill-pond/ http://www.bigbassfisher.com/2009/06/30/fishing-trip-03-mill-pond/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:08:11 +0000 admin http://www.bigbassfisher.com/?p=67

Worlds Smallest Bass

I went a couple spots last night before my softball game. I managed to pull out what quite possibly could be the biggest bass I’ve ever seen in my life, as you can see from the picture above.  I also pulled out a few bluegills. But nothing of any size.

Laura A Ward Park

I started at Laura A Ward park. I walked around the entire pond and didn’t see anything but frogs moving until I got to the where I took this picture below. I saw a couple small fish swimming in this little channel. After an hour, once I had completed my lap around the pond with no bites, I decided to head over to mill pond.

Laura A Ward Park

And I ended up here.

Big Snapping Turtle

The bite wasn’t great really, I was here about an hour and 15 minutes and I probably could’ve caught as many bluegills as I wanted, but I was here after bass.  The only one I caught was the tiny thing that is in the first picture.  When I got there, I walked in there was this big bullfrog that sat next to me for about the first 10 minutes of my outing here. Then I poked it with my fishing pole and it hopped away. For being 15 feet from a road it was pretty quiet. I hadn’t fished here in over a decade. The landscaping they added since then on the north side is incredible.

Swimming Muskrat