Iola Basin fishing well

[brown-time]

The east 4 miles of Blue Mesa is active with lots of folks fishing Iola, Stevens, North Willow and Dry Creek. Two of us hit up Iola looking for a combination of the 20” bows n 12” perch we found in the channel in September. Never found them, found lots of slimers to 16” bobo’s and a couple browns at 18”. Ice varied from 7-9”. A guy on a Snowdog paraded around but didn’t fish much. We were there Sunday so about 10 cars at Iola and that many at Stevens. Was supposed to be negative 8 but temps were 3 to 28 with zero wind. Most fish showed on the Marcum at 16-24’, best color glow white. Wax worm tipper. Nice start to the season, going back tomorrow.

[arkansas angler]

Nice report. How was day 2?

[brown-time]

Didn’t go, roads were slick, will wait a few days to warm back up.

[4°Fahrenheit]

Sounds like a good day!!

As of Dec 17 (-10° on arrival. Just a tad bit nipple)....West of Dry creek is iffy. I wouldn't head too far west from there on the ice.  Not sure where open water starts but Elk Creek had fog so I'm guessing open water. Dry creek is 6"-7" clear ice.

We targeted lakers and caught them on tubes; white, black/white, red/white, black/chartreuse (they seemed more eager to take the smaller tubes) ...jigging raps, kastmasters. Most in that 18" length with a few around 25".  Small chits really but that's Iola. Lost one "good" laker on a kastmaster. Between me and my buddy probably 30-40 fish. Just a couple of trout. 61' of water.

We didn't try for perch; maybe this Tuesday.

[brown-time]

Update. Went back yesterday, Dry Creek. Got out late, 9ish, missed the early bite, hit 52 fow, first drop a 20” brown on the tube/sucker. Than a 18” bow. Unusual for a bow to be that deep and on the bottom. Lakers woke up a bit at 11 and started chasing, I nailed 4 in 20 minutes, 1 decent fattie. 3 of us ended with 14 total, kept these 9.

[4°Fahrenheit]

Find the 60' of water in the old river channel and you'll catch lakers all day. Every laker we hooked had a huge belly.  The ones my buddy kept were stuffed with  2-4" perch and one had two 6" perch. I let everything go. Headed back up Monday.  Good perch are being elusive. Dinks dinks and more dinks; not worth my time filleting.

[JKaboom]

Great info and that's great you all did so well

[mtnhillbilly]

was at dry creek yesterday the 28th.  soft break through slushy edges but about 12" ice
Ice conditions were open water from east elk creek to dry gulch (basically all of bay of chickens)
 then ice again to just shy of Dillon pinnacle bridge.

Smacked a pile of browns in 24' of water and caught 3 rainbows 2' under ice. fished from 2pm to 4:30