How's everyone doing so far?  I know a lot of you just put all the ice fishing stuff away.  We (SE SoDak.) had the ice go out about 2 weeks ago and the fishing has been decent.  Just wondering how others are doing around this "latitude".  

Good Luck!

I guess I'm on the southern side of the upper midwest.  I live on the north side of Kansas City.  We had some warm days and the water at Smithville Lake had reached 48 - 51 degrees.  On the days I haven't worked, the weather has been bad so I haven't been able to get out much but I have caught fish on the few trips I've taken.  After the last two weeks of mostly cold weather the water temperatures are back down to 45.  During that time it seems a cold front comes through every other day.  A few days ago we had some record lows around 20 degrees.  This weather has made the bite very sporadic and tough.

Getting out this weekend to chase some crappies.  Ice just went off here in southern MN this week.

Friends were up at lake of the woods last weekend and still needed the extension on their ice auger up there.  It will be a while yet.

Chode,

I have a friend in Fairmont but he's not really into bass fishing.....yet. Are there some good LMB lakes that you know of within a decent driving distance of there?

thanks....

Most lakes around there have some decent bass fishing in them. Check out the MN DNR website. They have a great lake finder tool that allows you to look for lakes by name, county, or even click on them on the map.

You will find all the information you need on finding a lake.

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/lakefind/index.html

This is right up your alley.

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/maps/compass.html?scale=100000&mapxy=371823.28283067+4818806.46477038

I have fished the lakes on the other side of Mankato quite a bit, and most of them are great bass lakes.  Washington, Madison, Cedar