The Kankakee River Back Water

Today I finally went ice fishing. My husband worked all week so I had to wait until his day off. We decided to go to that back water on the Kankakee River in Indiana. We only live about 10 miles from the Indiana border and often fish in Indiana. I live in Illinois. This back water on the Kankakee is on Route 41 north of Route 10, and across the street from the LaSalle Fish and Wild Life Area. We have been going to this area for over 20 years.  A few months ago before the back water and other area lakes froze we had had a lot of rain. This particular back water has very low banks and floods quite often. This was the case when the water froze. The surrounding land was flooded. As the water receded back into the banks the ice was left behind and cracked right at the bank. It was an awesome sight to see sheets of ice left after the water receded. You could see the sheets  ice a foot or two up the tree trunk and the ground under the ice. This was the way it looked all the way down the channel of the back water. Thankfully I had my camera with me and took pictures like crazy. This back water is about a half mile long and it took me quite a while to get to our fishing spot. This as it turned out was the best part of our fishing excursion. The ice was awesome. We fished for about 3 hours and caught 3 bluegill, 1 crappie, and 1 nice rock bass. We did have several other hits but we were fishing a very woody area and the fish put us on the wood a few times resulting in a lost fish. All in all the reason for us being out there was to fish but I ended up having a better time looking at and taking pictures of the ice. Will have more soon. Happy Fishing.