Glass Question / Bass Alive in Iowa!!

[Ethan Book]

First of all I just wanted to let fatrap and all the other Iowans that the bass are still alive in Iowa (of course I think they are on strike in western Iowa). I was fishing at my favorite lake on Monday and caught over 20 bass in 2 hours with the largest ones coming in at 3.5 lbs ... not bad for Iowa. Anyways, I was fishing in and amongst a ton of standing timber and with the wind blowing and my out of practice trolling motor skills I was banging the old Starcraft into stumps left and right. So, my question is how much damage I would have been doing to my boat if I was running a glass fish/ski boat. My wife and I are looking at them, but I was worried about what it would look like after a 4 mile trip down the gravel road to get to the lake and then a couple hours in the standing timber. Can things be cleaned up, do I just need to get better on the TM (of course that is true), or can they take a certain amount of gentle bumping?



Just wondering???

 

[fatrap]

I occasionaly hit or bump a stump or trees and slow to medium trolling motor speeds with no problems. I've idled with my big motor up on stumps and falling trees no problems there either. Now some knock downs have limbs with sharp broken ends. These can but not always cause scratches in the gelcoat. Depends on how rotten the wood is. The fresher the more it could scratch. Now hitting a dead tree(widow maker) and having the top half or a one ton limb fall into the boat like what almost happened to me on Truman years ago, that could ruin your day.

I did catch two bass last Sunday on a pig n jig at Viking in SW Iowa. Also a four pound channel cat on the p&J. Most of our lakes have been killed out prior to restocking. One bass I caught said she wanted to relocate because she heard the DNR was gonna kill Viking next Oct. Told her to get fatter and make a date for next spring.LOL

fatrap

 

[Ethan Book]

Thanks for the info about glass boats and trees. I assume that with some practice I will get a little better on the TM, but some of those stumps/trees at Lake Miami are just under the water and can be hard to see when there is a ripple or a little chop.



About the Iowa fishing ... how far east do you come? Have you ever made it to 3 Mile or 12 Mile? I was just wondering if those were good bass lakes like people say they are. I did fish 3 Mile this summer, but really didn't get a chance to target bass because I was with my in-laws and in their boat so we were trying to catch the crappie for dinner.

 

[Edward Lea.]

Wow ebook. Lots to cover here. We bought our first Glass boat this year and took it fishing at three mile. You can scar the gelcoat pretty good on trees believe me. Boat looked like it had been through a war. It was a windy day also. Got most of the scars touched up now.



Forget about 12 mile for the next 5 years. They drew it down this summer/fall and killed it. The yellow bass had populated to the point there was no more reproduction of the other fish. The same thing that happened to Anita, Icaria and it's two surrounding lakes. They won't say how they got in all the lakes in SW Iowa but it occured at the same time the DNR did the work on a bunch of the lakes listed above including Viking. Viking's yellow bass have populated to the point of depressing the other fish's reproduction, they eat all the young. Unfortunatly they have discovered a few yellow bass in Three mile also. They just put Wipers in three mile this year to see if they could control the yellow bass population. History says in 5 years the lake will be doomed also. There are several other lakes in SW Iowa that will need to be killed off also. Damn shame we had some great fishing in the SW portion of the state until they tried to improve the structure and messed around with the lakes. Now the lakes have/had to be killed off and the stocking process started over.



FatRap we were camping at Viking last Sunday also. Last trip of the year and all. I saw someone there with a Tracker and ask if he heard of the site here but he said he hadn't. I guess I had asked the wrong person. We didn't bring the boat, last time we were there we were using topwaters and rapala's and all we could catch were hundreds of yellow bass over the weekend.