Central MN Ice Update!

Well, with the ice show behind us it’s only fitting to have good ice to use all of our new equipment on, right? But, due to the warmer than normal temps in November I was a little worried as to when that would be. Now thanks to the colder than average temps in the last week the water temps have plummeted. I was fishing in a boat not a week ago and today there’s only a couple lakes in the area that are open and they’re over 100 feet deep. From the looks of it most of the lakes froze over Friday night and with these very cold temps the lakes should be making some good ice. I was also happy to hear the snow storm is supposed to miss us to the East. I predict we’ll have at least 4”-6” of good ice by the weekend. There’s 1-3” of ice right now depending on the lake. There were people fishing on a couple lakes this afternoon. So, if you’re looking to get out this weekend, as always be cautious, but there should be plenty of safe ice for walking. Good luck

Thanks for the update Joe. I would imagine we will see so photos of fish on the ice from you soon.

I checked 3 places for ice today

1) The St.Croix river has a thin skim of ice looking at about 2-3 weeks before good ice

2) smaller lake had some ice around the edges still 80% open water, I thought this one would have been froze by now

3) Lake Owasso had a nice sheet of ice looked thin though and had some bad looking ice where you could see the wind had blown chunks up and they froze

I am giving until friday before I check again but with the snow predicted and high winds predicted things could take a turn for the bad very quickly

There were boats on Reno on the 1st and people ice fishing on the 6th. I hope the snow will hold off.
DT

I also saw a few people on Reno today. I Fished a small lake last night and this evening. Moderate success. Can’t believe the difference in ice thickness where the ice has less than a half inch of snow on it.Maybe an inch and a half of ice, while the uncovered is probably twice that.
I also am happy we are missing the snow. Last year was very hard getting around due to slush until late January.

Saw 8 vehicles parked on the East access of Ottertail Lake today with about 4 portables on the ice.

I checked a couple lakes yesterday and they both had around 4″ of ice. We only ended up getting 1-2″ of snow, so we should be good to go

ya my friend i when out on pelican lake and there was 4-5 inches of ice and the fishing was good!!!! there should be up to 8 inches by this weekend.