Kewaunee River 3/27/11

Took a ride to Kewaunee on Sunday morning in hope of landing my first Steelhead of the year.  I arrived at 6:30 to a temperature reading in my truck of 6°!  I figured there might be some ice, but I never imagined it would be constantly coming down the river in sheets!  There was also steam rolling off the river as the sun broke the horizon.

Despite the grim outlook, I hopped into my waders and headed to a spot that looked promising.  I soon realized that fishing was gonna be difficult to imposible due to the heavy ice flows.  I made several attempts to get a rod set with spawn in the hole, but every time I would get it set, an ice hunk would catch my line and take it downstream.  I then tried to float fish it, which worked somewhat, but I had to clean my guides of ice on each cast.  The ice was stacking up in the prime spot, so I wasn't able to get my bait where I wanted to no matter what!

After about an hour of dealing with the ice, I decided to check some other spots and see if I could find some open water without any ice flows.  To my surprise, I found that in town the original ice was still in place, and thick enough to ice fish!  I set 3 Automatic Fishermen and waited them out.  There were no signs of fish whatsoever, never even had a bobber raise in 2 hours, so I decided to go and check out the Ahnapee River in Algoma.

Upon arrival I was excited to see a boat trolling just south of the harbor for Brown Trout, which is next on my to do list!  The river had some shell ice, but none where I wanted to fish, that was until I threw my line in the water!  Within 5 minutes, a 100'x100' sheet of shell ice blew into my spot and got hung up on a bridge piling.  The ice once again prevented me from fishing!

At this point the writing was on the wall, it just wasn't going to happen today!  Despite minimal results in the cold, I still learned a thing or two about the river and am itching to get back out there soon!