(Area) As spring arrives, anglers are turning their attention to open water fishing.
Farm ponds are often good to get to early in the year before aquatic vegetation limits access and diminishes water clarity. Elsewhere, Lake Anita provides a good crappie bite early in the spring. “A lot of times up at Lake Anita there is a crappie bite up there in that east arm where they park the pontoons. Water coming in from the east tends to warm that water up and draw those crappie up into that east arm.”
Fisheries Biologist Bryan Hayes adds catfishing can be good this time of year. “It’s sometimes kind of unusual for people to envision catfishing this early in the season, but a lot of times there is a catfish bite shortly after the ice goes off. We have some lake that I would suggest people target for catfish starting with Lake Manawa. We don’t grow much vegetation in there at all and it’s stocked pretty heavily with catfish.” Hayes says Littlefield Lake east of Exira and the Greenfield City Reservoir both have a nice catfish population as well.
Hayes says cut bait should be used and you’ll need to find the shore that the wind has been blowing at. “You want to fish on the windy side of the lake. You’ll pile up warmer water on that shore as well as any fish that died underneath the ice. They’ll be blown over to that shore drawing those catfish in.”
