Fishing in Iowa keeps getting better and better. Into record-size fish? Well, last summer an angler on a southern Iowa farm pond landed a 10-pound largemouth bass that was only ounces shy of the state record. In western Iowa, the Missouri River has in recent years produced a 101-pound blue catfish and a 38-pound channel catfish that established new state records, as well as a 92-pound flathead catfish that would have set a new record had it been weighed on a certified scale.

Looking for quantities of fish? You too have lots of options in the Hawkeye State. Lake Rathbun maintains its reputation as a crappie factory. Channel catfish are so thick in some rivers in southern Iowa that Iowa Department of Natural Resources surveys show that overpopulation is actually stunting some cats' growth. At Lake Red Rock and Saylorville Lake, anglers each summer fill livewells with feisty white bass during the fish's midsummer feeding frenzies.

Anglers have lots of options when it's time to go fishing in Iowa. Here's a quick overview of some of the best places to catch big fish, or lots of fish, in 2009.

JANUARY
Saugeyes
The saugeye is a cross between a walleye and a sauger. During recent winters, saugeyes in the Iowa River immediately below the Coralville Dam in eastern Iowa have quietly gone on an incredibly intense bite.

"Last winter, fishing for saugeyes and walleyes below Coralville Dam was absolutely tremendous," said Roger Mildenstein, owner of the Fin and Feathers outdoors store in nearby Iowa City. "But you'd never know it talking to the guys who were fishing it. They'd come in, buy their jigs and tackle and never say a word about how good the fish were biting."

The hottest spot was in the spillway below the dam, where the floods of '93 -- not to mention those from last summer -- scoured a deep hole at the point at which waters from the emergency spillway dump into the main channel. Anglers fished jigs from boats, cast from shore and drilled holes in a shelf of ice that formed over quieter waters in the spillway.

Many anglers who fished the secret saugeye bite below Coralville Dam in midwinter were convinced they'd filled their five-fish-per-day limit with walleyes. Regional fisheries biologist Paul Sleeper said it's difficult to differentiate between saugeyes and walleyes.

"We did some genetic testing and compared the genetic results with what we visually guessed the fish to be," he said. "We were wrong about 30 percent of the time with our visual identifications. About the only consistent difference between saugeyes and walleyes is that the white spots on the tails of saugeyes (are) smaller, and that saugeyes rarely get larger than 4 or 5 pounds, while walleyes can get up to 10 pounds in our rivers."

FEBRUARY
Northern Pike
If you want to draw a crowd of ice-anglers, pull a 30-inch northern pike weighing 10 to 15 pounds through a hole in the ice at one of the natural lakes in northern Iowa.

Patience is the key to pike. Drill holes along the deepwater edges of submerged weedbeds at Ingham Lake, High Lake, Tuttle Lake or other natural lakes. Use tip-ups baited with large suckers or chubs. Don't expect lots of fish, but expect at least a few larger fish from a patient day of fishing. Many ice-anglers keep an eye on tip-ups targeting northern pike while they fish for bluegills and crappies in nearby holes in order to catch not only size but numbers of fish during a day of ice-angling.

MARCH
Yellow Perch
By March, most folks have tired of winter and are ready to focus on the approach of open water fishing. But a few diehard anglers at the Iowa Great Lakes know that last ice can present some of the best ice-angling of the winter, and they don't give up on drilling holes until the last floes melt.