Waiting for ice to grow a bit more for ice fishing in comfort. Currently 7.5 inches. Ice Castle needs 10, preferably 12. Kubota and Truck 12 too. Been on the ice with the Mule (needs 7 inches).

We had 4 days of skimpy ice back in November, and open water since then.

My "ice fishing"consists of taking ziplocks of fillets out of the freezer.

How do you keep your garage so clean?
I spent four hours picking up in mine yesterday and if you didn't know what it looked like before you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. lol

If you drink enough Rue 33, you only need 3" of ice on the water....

Augie - As an old geezer I am not that good a dodging items laying on the floor so have had to up my game cleaning-wise.

Sunil - Rising spirits lift all things.

It looks like after next week you will have plenty of ice.

Yes, the Polar ice cap moving south from Canada.

Looks like one of the coldest Christmas weeks in my memory for here.

Weather app on my phone's calling for highs in the 20's, low's of 7 on Thursday & Friday next week. Yikes. Looks like I'll be chucking a good bit of wood into the furnace. It'll be interesting to see how hard the pond ices over.

Hopefully you don't get a bunch of snow. That will insulate the pond and minimize the ice. If the snow is heavy and thick, it will push down the ice and water will come up thru the cracks making a white frozen mess.

Ice?

Had a nice 3" thick skateable surface this morning, and now the weather is messing it all up. 2-4 inches of smudge expected, though right now it is sleet. Didn't even get a chance to get on it.

I guess weather is different on the east coast here in California I have never seen smudge not sure if I would know it if I saw it

Going to be a little chilly next week!

Should make my Ice Forecasting Spreadsheet happy.

Any rain in Lake Co CA ? How's the weather -- good for the Vinyards?

Darn Dwight! that is some right chilly weather in your forecast, is that for real? youre gonna need a coupla pairs of longjohns!

Next Thursday - Monday the highs are 16, 16, 11, 16, 19. Lows are in the single digits. That is without windchill.

Predicting a high of 5F here on Friday. Glad that I am tagged out on deer...

Yes, for real. Happens once or twice most winters; not this early in the season, though.

ewest just saw your response yes we have had a little bit of rain here in northern California. Weather has been good for the grapes but they are going dormant now

Dwight, how's the snow level at your place? I talked to my cousin in MN and they've had 28" of heavy wet snow in the past 4 days.

First Ice fishing excursion of the year. 13.5 inch Black Crappie.

I know you're tall, but 13.5"??!!!!

Just kidding!!!!

Happy New Year!!!

North Texas had a cold last week with temps in the single digits. I hunted but didn’t stay out long.

Nice Black Crappie! How much ice do you have? We are in a warm spell, the ice is 1/2 gone from the pond now and it's not safe to go out on. Same with the local lakes.

We have ice at 15 inches plus. Once we have over 12 I don't measure very often because that is safe for everything we may drive out there. My ice fore casting spreadsheet (which is normally accurate to +- .5 in.) says we have 15.67 in this morning.

Supposed to be pretty cold this week so ice will continued to grow. Big snow storm forecast for Monday-Tuesday.

Happy 2023, everyone!

Thanks Dwight!

You gotta be kidding. Ice goes into tea.

Dwight - Thanks for the MN ice update. Do you have that fancy ice shanty on the ice yet? Take a picture for us of it on the pond. That will simply amaze those Texans and Floridians.

Bill up a little way back in this thread is a picture of a crappie and me inside the Ice Castle out on the ice.

Dwight's Ice Castle >>>> ice shanty!

Dwight - I know what the Ice Castle looks like inside and sittin on the garage platform. I was wanting a picture of it sitting on your frozen pond to show those warm water guys the impressive image of that thing sittin on a hard water pond. I don't think they can comprehend that concept on ice especially something the size of the "castle". Words will have difficulty accurately describing that sight of a castle on water.

Hello.

Here January 2, there is no more snow.

Tomcod season delayed, ice is too thin for the shack.

Tomcod (Channel fish) fishing is a major tourist activity in the region.

https://sadlp.ca/fr/galerie-photos/peche-aux-petits-poisson-des-chenaux/page-1
A+

Bill, can't even see it out there today with this heavy snow storm.

I am sure glad I don't need to remove some of that snow from the pond to get sunlight penetration through the ice. I would not call that a 'snow storm". It looks more like a blizzard by my Ohio standards. If that was at my house, I would be looking for some big time COMFORT food.

This an unedited two minute video that features me driving down to the Ice Castle to get ready for ice fishing.

Castle Trip

If the truck is warn, you don't even have to put on a long sleeved shirt to go ice fishing!!

Caught an NP in the 5 pound range last evening. It went for my jig. Before we got the other lines out it went for my other jig, pulled that rod down the hole, wrapped around Gail's line, wrapped around the camera. Got it off the camera then pulled my rod (with fish) up the hole where Gail had been fishing. Got my rod back using Gail's and then worked on the NP until I could gaff it. Had two jigs on him. NP in cold storage waiting for cleaning. No more fish after that, as you might imagine.

Smaller NP like this one are the absolute worst actors in ice fishing! They will attack all minnows in the area and seem to not care about a little hook in the face.

Sounds like a tense time with a lot of 'activity' going on!!

I'm assuming you don't all the stick in the shanty...

Dwight - Excellent - EXCELLENT VIDEO. A big THANKS for taking time for the production. Was there any "blue smoke" inside the Ice Castle when Ms pike created the 3 rod line tangle???. I hate it when two lines get wrapped together under the ice. Ms.pike bested that with a creative tangle among four - 3 rods and a camera cable. When you clean the NP let us know if it was a boy or girl.

Great report Dwight. Those NP can make a mess of things even without the ice. I hate to pull one that size in the boat.

Well done Dwight

Bill:
It was a boy.

Slightly different type of ice house, but you can still fish in it!

Sunil, I don't know if they have Peroni but you could ask. LOL

[video:youtube][/video]

Ice fishing has gone dead slow. We have 26 inches of ice now. There are a lot of fish down there as attested by the underwater video cam; just not biting.

Dwight, I know a guy that lives North of Duluth and he's still catching them, but he bounces around between some different lakes depending on what type of fish he wants to try and catch.

Spoke too soon. The Stick caught this 20 inch yesterday afternoon:

Gordy looks good.

Healthy looking LMB.

Ice is slightly over 27 inches.

We had a blizzard with 15 inches of snow that piled all up in our driveway and yard. 6 hours on the Kubota blowing the stuff.
There were a lot of long 3 to 4 foot drifts = slow going. Pond had about 12 inches average so that cleaned up pretty quickly.

I was wondering how much you got out of the storm.

Spring may happen this year as we have Robins and the Loons are staging here for a few days. Plenty of migratory ducks and geese around too.

Ice is still solid and over 20 inches thick! Average ice out is the first week of April; not happening this year.

I spent the last week in April in Minneapolis a couple of times.
There's always the chance.

Our winter never really happened. We had a whole 2 days where the ice may have been thick enough to get out on. All of the cold air was to the west of us this year. Also only needed to plow once, and I may as well of not bothered. This was a blessing though, as plowing a gravel driveway is a lot of work in the spring, especially since I had a lot of fresh gravel applied this last fall.

It was a dud of a year for pond hockey. I am starting to doubt if we will ever have sponsored tournaments again. Hasn't happened in 8 years.

20 inch thick ice. Never seen that and not looking for it

Storm coming through today-tomorrow. Rain, freezing rain, sleet, thunderstorms, possible large hail. snow, heavy snow, winds past 40 mph. Lots of action by mother nature and nothing government can do about it.

"Lots of action by mother nature and nothing government can do about it."

-They can spend money. We know that always solves things...

We were in the mid 80s last week and all that ice disappeared. Don't miss it a bit!! Now we return to a more normal spring with highs 50-60.

Happy Spring Everyone!!

Thanks for the good Minnesota Springtime update.

Blowing season ends, mowing season starts .

You don't have a mud season between the two?

Generally not much mud. Our land is on top of gravel and sand with clay 30-40 feet down. The foot of top soil sucks up the water and casts off the excess to the sand/gravel layer. Very effective drainage.

That's good Dwight!