You've got cabin fever in the worst way. An ice-fishing trip is just the ticket to get you and some family or friends outdoors for an afternoon of fun and fishing.

But the same weather that contributes to cabin fever creates nasty road conditions. Icy roads, drifted roads and blowing snow take the fun out of possible trips to longstanding Hawkeye ice-fishing hotspots such as Kent Park, Clear Lake, Big Creek Lake, Lake Ahquabi or Lake McBride.

All's not lost, however: You and your buddies or children can still salvage an afternoon of ice-angling, and provide the fixings for a midwinter meal of fresh fish. There are small, often overlooked ice-fishing opportunities within the city limits of all our larger metropolitan areas. Without leaving the city limits, creative anglers can drill holes and catch crappies, bluegills, walleyes and even northern pike.

DES MOINES METRO AREA
Ice-anglers in the Des Moines metropolitan area have a dozen or more urban ice-fishing opportunities. Gray's Lake, Easter Lake and the ponds at Waterworks Park come quickly to mind, but there are smaller venues worth exploring when the weather is too nasty to travel to lakes outside the metro.

Ankeny, a suburb north of Des Moines, has a policy of creating fishable ponds whenever possible in new parks or subdivisions. "Our engineers make a conscious effort to create ponds that will hold fish when they design new parks and public areas," said Ed Gooch, Ankeny maintenance supervisor. "Ankeny was originally a pretty low area, so it's not hard to dig a hole and fill it with water. So when they have to incorporate a storm water control structure or water-retention basin, they make an effort to make it big enough and deep enough to hold fish."

The result: nine small public ponds sprinkled around Ankeny, some old, some new. Hawkeye Pond, in Wagner Park, just north of the fire station on First Street, was originally 13 to 15 feet deep when it was constructed in the late 1960s, but is now probably around 8 feet at its deepest point.

"That pond, and all our ponds, were originally stocked with bluegills, largemouth bass and channel catfish," said Gooch. "But they've got every species of fish found in Saylorville and Big Creek lakes. People go fishing at Saylorville and Big Creek, bring home fish, decide they don't want to clean them, and turn them loose in one of the ponds."

Gooch doesn't advocate such stocking, because it can unbalance fish populations. But he admits that there are interesting angling possibilities in many of Ankeny's city-owned ponds. "I've heard of walleyes and northern pike being caught," he said. "Not many, and not often, but enough to keep things interesting. Mostly, it's bluegills, crappies and bass. Crappie and bluegill fishing can be pretty good in some of the ponds. The north pond at Springwood Park produced some nice stringers of bluegills last summer, and should be just as good this winter."