Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Bremer Ice

Well, Dwight -- today is it! Last day of warm weather! For our southern friends, we have been above normal for the past 28 days, which has been great. Starting tomorrow, it looks like a drop to normal or even a little below normal. Dwight will start making ice pretty quickly with nighttime lows coming in the teens!

I assume that is when monitoring the test equipment (temps , DOs etc) will become a real challenge. Too arctic for me.

I mentioned in the Redhead thread that the circulator would be going on-line today. I had installed it a few weeks ago so all I had to do was set the timer and the temperature. It is now ready to start its winter work.

The monitoring process in the winter is a little more work in that you need to bore a hole to find water. The transportation to the monitoring location changes from Barge to Mule with chains.

Oh, and a lot more clothes are required!

What did the duck do when the circulator started working ?

ruh roh

The circulator hasn't run because the temp has stayed above 25F.

We did have a big wind yesterday that cleared out the ice. The duck must have had enough and flew to warmer climes. I haven't seen it all day today.

By By birdie.

The duck is back today....

I put the circulator on full time so I can get one more set of weekly readings from the Barge. The way the temperatures look going forward, I should have enough ice to walk on and do the following weeks readings through the ice.

It is a plan with many "ifs" nested amidst several "it depends".

Did you offer him a ride on the barge ? A cat and a duck on the barge would be interesting.

I can barely get close enough to that Redhead for a photo, let alone sharing space on the Barge.

My plan to keep the ice open failed miserably with just the area area around the Barge remaining open. It was 6 F degrees overnight and only 21 F this afternoon.

I was wondering how cold it would get up there now with the cold front coming thru here as well. Today was the first day this winter that the thermometer didn't get above freezing.

Snow and 20's here.

It's about 10 F this morning, and highs only in the upper 20s today. Definitely making some ice!

My pond is 50% covered with skim ice today, and probably will be 100% covered by the end of the week. It's still open by the feeder and the trout are still coming up and hitting AM 600 pellets. It looks like it's time to fire up the aerator.

Gotta love Minnesota and North Dakota! Then there's our fellow pondmeister in Northern Canada that was ice fishing several weeks ago!

I organized a Perch Express trip to Devils Lake North Dakota several years ago. Ice was four feet thick the second week of March!

I checked the ice today because my IIS (internal ice sensor) indicated we were at 12 inches. Sure enough, it measured 12". So we went from open water on December 1 to 12" of ice on December 16th.

The ice is clear as glass, which is unusual. I suppose the quick freeze from day one makes the difference.

I'm pretty sure I could ice fish my ponds except near where I intermittently run the diffuser in the vicinity of the shore and the pier on the north end of the biggest pond. Ice looks to be at least 2 inches thick -- probably more.

I'm going to wait until late ice to catch and release some yellow perch to determine if I accidentally moved some male perch into the pond with my temporarily holding pond situation. (SNAFU) If i get any that look like males they will go into one of the floating cages.

Dwight do you have any pics of that clear ice to share ? Clear ice and a blue sky with snow on the land might make a nice xmas scene.

Asking Dwight to be creative from the Land of Sky Blue Waters? Probably not a problem.

Cecil, in the "good" winters, we max at perhaps 14 inches of ice. In the "bad" winters, we can get as much as 32 inches. We live in the land of extremes -- you just don't know what we might get.

Now I understand SnowBirds.

Even with their funny accents?

Aw heck Theo, we don't expect to actually be able to communicate with them. They talk too fast for anyone to really understand them.

A couple of weeks ago, the night temps got into the middle teens for 2 nights. It didn't warm up much during the days. When I leave during the winter, I always drain the pump in my well house. I've had some busted cast iron and now take precautions. When I returned, I found that the grease in the sealed bearings had frozen. It was locked. I had to use a space heater to warm everything to get started again. This has never happened to me before and I realized that youse guys live with this kind of stuff all the time.

Hot and dry keeps sounding better to me all the time.

Dave, it's all the cold weather things we do that keep us from getting bored.
The cabin has quick drains so it doesn't take long to clear the pipes, and I keep the place at 45 degrees.

8 below this morning, but it's up to 2 above now.

Cold weather fun.

Nice looking boots