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Michael · Joined: 28 Jan 2012 Posts: 3823 Location: Bridgeport

Friday I arrived at Mondo just before 2:45pm to find the main pond 95% open and half of the spring pond open. The only areas of the main pond that still had skim ice were the shoreline from the common children's area to the quiet cove.

First stop is when I played with a wide variety of hard bodied lures and a few spinners. The only action I got was the same pickerel hit a yellow perch J-7 once on 3 separate casts. That's when I found a pattern similar to this time last year, where the color was Rapala's yellow perch on minnow shaped lures.

I move around as I continue casting with the J-7 and the legendary helsinki shad HJ-6.

The spot I caught the pickerel at produced a cookie cutter under a pound on a yellow perch XR-4. Not long after releasing that bass, I see an osprey up above start to circle and then dive down before taking off with a chain pickerel.

I keep covering water, including where the osprey caught the pickerel.

As sunset got closer, I had a bite going at the same spot I caught the cookie cutter. I was throwing the HJ-6 and found the pattern was 1 to 3 jerks with a long pause. The bass would come and inhale it after at least 3 seconds of pausing the lure. Total was another 3 cookie cutters.

One of my last stops produced a 7.5" crappie on the HJ-6, which was the fighter of the day.

Headed back to the bike at 7:40.