Thyler and I did a mini-tour this morning to snoop out some panfish action. We went to the CC pits , the larger one, thinking that we hadn’t heard any banter about it this year. We found ice straight back from the Mayo lot….along with open water. The main lake is mostly open water and the ice we found? One pop with the spud and it went thru. I carefully crept out about two feet and the ice sagged , lets just say badly.
So we went to the pit next to the lot. Its all ice. One spud bar pop’s worth of it. Everywhere we hit it, one pop and water. I treid the sneak here as well and ended up wet. So people can make their own deductions. My conclusion is that the CC waters are not safe and propbably won’t be for at least a week of these colder temps that are forecast.
So on to Foster. Yesterday I saw several persons at both ends of the lake. Tyler and I went right to the south since he was there last night and the fish cooperated at that end. And he said, the ice at the other end wasn’t any good. Hey, I’m wet and ain’t going to argue at this juncture. The ice down south here was at 6 inches or so. The water in open holes didn’t bounce when I walked by so …. We catch some dink sunfish and while we fish we watch quite a bunch start to gather at the north side. We see fis hit the ice too….as in trout type fish. So, we pack up and take the walk. We had an ice bridge of about two feet width to get out on the ice when we get to the landing area and step out. So Tyler walks out a ways to the first two fellas fishing and asks “how much ice”. Not a favorable reply came back. So, now here we are out over about 8-10 feet of water and I starts to look better at the ice and tell Tyler to spud it. You guessed it…one pop, water. There were two guys out within mere feet of an open spring hole on this shale and another large open area appears to be from someone having gone thru but I can’t confirm it. I begin my tippy toe off the ice at this point and Tyler gives a couple “I can’t believe its that thin and I’m standing out here” pops with the spud yielding the same results. He gets off dry too.
I have been on thin ice before in my life and I have been thru the ice on more than one occasion. Fish are not worth either, and that comes from first hand experience.
I plan to find some stuff to do that needs doing around the house for the next couple days and hope that the weatherman isn’t pulling our infamous leg about the cold temps coming. Right now I think persons who choose to push the fishing envelope on many of the waters found in and around Rochester are taking a substantial risk. If we do not get the snow, this in-coming cold can straighten things out in a couple days. Anything more than a couple inches of dry snow though and it will be a while before fishing will be safe.
