Boiled yesterday and made 15.5 gallons of syrup. Hoping for two more weeks of sap runs these next two weeks to get up close to 50 gallons of syrup again.

Collected 470 gallon yesterday and have it running through the RO while I’m at work. Will start boiling tonight to burn some off then finish the rest tomorrow. Should get another 13 or so gallons of finished syrup. Sugar content dropped a little this week down to 2.5% but still not bad.

Don’t mind at all. I have no idea why they wouldn’t load here. Back to syrup stuff….
Went and checked tanks tonight and we have another 300 gallons in the woods. Collected 100 tonight to make some room since I have to work late tomorrow. Should be another good boil on Saturday.

Test

For some reason none of my pics will upload. I can send you pictures of more things if you’d like.

Pic of RO

Homemade RO

I originally had an RO system I built and had about $250 into it. It would process about 10 gallons an hour going from 2.5% sap up to 7-8%. I could easily walk you through building one. This year I bought an RO Bucket single Post RO that will do 60 GPH. Think I paid $1100 for it but the time savings is big as well as efficiency. No finishing pan, I just test the syrup with the Hydrometer and when it’s at the point I want we just pull the pan off to the right (frame welded to evaporator in the picture) then filter directly from the pan through our Filter Press. Filtered syrup goes into stock pots then into house to get put into jars.

Boiled down yesterday and got 13.5 gallons in 12 hours due to some mechanical failures. Our preheater pump went out so we were dumping cold sap in to the pan. Here are some more pictures of our operation.

Here’s a better picture of the evaporator. I built it myself. I have a run of copper pipe in the steam hood that I can feed either directly from my RO or from a pump from the tank. Sap goes in the preheater at 40 degrees and comes out at 120 into the preheat pan on the back and I can adjust the valve on to keep my sap level consistent. I fill the woodbox every 7 minutes with slab wood that I buy from the Amish.

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Checked our tanks last night and we have another 300 gallons in the woods to collect and boil tomorrow. Will run it through my RO tonight so I should only have 125 gallons left to boil in the morning. Last year we made 50 gallons of syrup and sold out so hoping for another good year this year.

We tapped March 1st in Washburn County, WI. Collected 100 gallons Thursday and got it to boiling point after running it through the RO to kill bacteria. Had good runs Monday and Tuesday this week with another 200 gallons those two days from 160 taps.

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We have 3 of them for our High School fishing team. Really like them, got about 40 holes through 20″ of ice last on each battery. No complaints with them.

Just came in from pumping one tank that had 190 gallons in it. I have another tank with 100 more gallons and maybe 30 or so in bags. Hoping to boil Monday. We are sitting at 19.5 gallons of syrup so far, hoping for 50 total. If we can survive the warm spell early next week I think we’ll get there.

We have 140 taps in. 110 on gravity tubing and 30 on bags. I had to pump last week at 10pm and the tubing was still running steady.

We boiled on Saturday, 350 gallons of sap before Reverse Osmosis, 115 after. Finished with 9 1/2 gallons of syrup. Just checked tanks tonight and have another 250 in tanks and probably 50 in bags. Hoping for a good run on Thursday and another boil Saturday or Sunday. I’m in Washburn County WI so temps aren’t quite as high as you guys in the cities but still getting too warm over the weekend. Hoping buds don’t pop.

Usually we work in groups of 4-6 students so one person drilling, someone checking depths or using an underwater camera to check bottoms then we’ll use livescope and vexilars for the actual fishing. It’s just going to help us eliminate water during our tournaments. We have fundraised and have about $10000 in our account so the kids decided they wanted to purchase one.

We have a list of discounts but not for Livescope. Any recommendations for the mount,pole, what unit is best?

Got mine last week as well. Think it’s from my Ultrex purchase a couple years ago.

I’ve fished it a few times, pretty much what was said earlier is right on. Lots of humps and points to fish. Decent fishing in the whole lake. Biggest walleye I caught on Big Sis came in 3′ of water on a spinnerbait.

Slow for us today. Buddy snagged a sheepshead and only saw two other fish caught all day. Fished from 2-28′ and tried several different presentations. Worst day we’ve ever had out there.

Super slow start for us in Washburn County WI. Tapped the last week in February and only have 175 gallons of sap total so far from 140 taps. Still have over 2′ of snow in the woods here, bases of trees finally started to show a little. Hoping for a good run soon to get our first boil done. Upgraded to a filter press this year, hoping it makes everything go a little faster at the end.

Fished yesterday with a friend, launched around 9:45 am headed down towards Red Wing. Caught two carp down there. After lunch headed up towards the dam ended up catching 6 walleye, 2 Sauger, 6 catfish and a sheepshead. All on blade baits. Nothing wanted plastics yesterday

Was out yesterday on a large lake near Spooner. No slush but very rough ice/snow drifts. Had about 8″ of ice. 6″ of good hard ice then 2-3″ of frozen slush. Looks like another storm coming this week which is going to make it miserable getting around.

I tapped three weeks ago in Washburn County WI. Finally started running a bit on Saturday but very slow. Maybe have 130 gallons of sap currently sitting in the woods. Won’t start my RO with less than 250 gallons of sap to do and even that is little for my new evaporator that is 3×5. Hopefully things pick up the next few days as our snow finally melted in the woods yesterday. Built a vacuum filter this year for filtering, was sick of the gravity filtering, hopefully this speeds things up.

Number 4 and 5 Slab Raps are my go to for crappies in my neck of the woods when the fish are aggressive. Favorite color is Hot Glow Perch Locate them with the Vexilar and drop a Slab Rap down first. Usually they’ll come flying up to it as its dropping, if it doesn’t get hit right away just small twitches with the rod tip with the occasional rip of it. Some of my biggest crappies last year came on them, and when they hit it, they smoke it. Probably my favorite type of ice fishing bite.

Been tough in our area due to above average water temps. If we get a couple colder nights those fish will start to put on the feed bag and get more aggressive. Water on the lakes I was on this weekend was still mid 60s in the afternoon. Smallies were in that 8-12′ range but a few a little deeper and a few a little shallower. Doesn’t seem like they are really schooled up yet.

I used the Menards Ultradeck – Rustic. Put it on 5 years ago on a new deck and haven’t had any issues with the decking. I started using the hidden fastener system and it was a pain, so I just surface screwed it all and I don’t notice the screws. I just power wash the deck once or twice a year. It has faded a little due to being on the south side of the house but it has faded evenly

I was on Shell Lake and had 47 degrees Saturday morning, Sunday morning was 49. Smallies haven’t quite turned on yet. I caught some but not the non stop action as soon as it gets a little warmer like I’ve had in the past.

watisitoya, Let me know what you have for water temps up there. I’ll be fishing around Spooner but always head up to Round several times in the spring once water hits 50-55 degrees.