Macbride Ice 2/25

I fished Macbride for a few hours this morning. I picked up a couple small crappies right around sunrise, and a few small runty bluegills up after that. I was out there Wednesday afternoon and Friday morning, and the bite was better those days than it was today. I could coax a bluegill in every so often, but even they were off this morning, so I packed up at quarter to ten.

The warm temps of the previous few days did not seem to hurt the ice much on the west end of the north arm, where I was fishing on top of one of the community brushpiles. It was popping and heaving pretty good this morning, and there was still about 7″ of good clear ice.

That’s a shocker, I’d thought the lake would have been melted by now.

Vike- did you do any checking on the south arm?

The lake is still froze over entirely, except right at the culvert on the causeway. There is also a small open spot directly south of the beach and boat rental place, with a good-sized patch of ice around it that does not look good at all. There were a couple shelters set up under the powerlines this morning, which surprised me a little bit, as that is the usual bad ice spot. I didn’t see anyone out by the main ramp, but the ice there looked alright, although I didn’t get out and check it.

Judging by the forecast, FWIW, the good ice may not last long, although colder temps are supposed to be coming again next week. Whether the good 7″ ice of today makes it until then remains to be seen. It will be fitting, given this winter’s crazy weather swings, if ice-out comes later than normal, and it looks to me like it will be a couple weeks yet before the ice is gone on Macbride and Coralville res.

On that note, I went and looked at a couple of ponds in Coralville yesterday afternoon. They had open water right at the edges, and the ice was starting to look pretty rotten. Where I stepped on it close to shore there was some creaking, and not the good kind.