Zoob

+1 The lakes have two layers of ice with slushy snow in between them - that was before our rain last night. It's bottom black ice, then about an inch or so of slush, then 3-4 inches of white, then our snow that got rain melted and glazed last night. When this does freeze (we're in the single digits the end of this weekend), we'll have some strange ice. There'll be faults and stress lines all throughout it. It'll look like a foot of ice, but it's whatever the bottom is as solid black, then some very unpredictable ice on the surface. The rain, the refreeze, will make not very strong ice on top, all riddled with stress points where one freeze bonded poorly to a previous freeze. As I've said before - personally, I'll only gauge the reliability based on that solid black ice at the very bottom - and then take into consideration it has a bunch of dead weight on top of it.

The metro is gonna get a day's worth of rain and two above-temp days. It's going to remove a lot of the snow. We've had a weird ice year, though. Solid ice with [PoorWordUsage] ice on top of it, and slush in between and on top. The rain will help seal - and we're dropping to the teens the following days. It'll lock things tight this time next week - for good or bad. That poor black ice at the bottom though - it's had to deal with a LOT of weight this year.

Anyone look at the forecast for the end of the week? Rain and nearly 40 degrees. /sigh Well, at least that'll melt any snow-cover. If we can get a solid freeze after, we might be in good luck for the rest of the season. I just hope the rain and warmth doesn't screw with the decent ice we've slowly built up so far.

that really all depends on the formation of the white ice. It could be mostly porous, and not worth a hill of beans (think that crunchy ice you see in late season melt). There's no real safe way to gauge white ice outside of "unsafe, all around."

I just checked South Lindstrom again last night. It's got a good solid 7-8 inches of black ice, then about 1-2 inches of slushy water, then about 1-2 inches of white ice, then another 3-5 inches of standing water/slush and snow. It's really weird - like a layered hamburger. There's 1 inch of watery slush between two layers of ice.

On my shoreline, I made an ice-rink for the kids, by hauling the snowblower down and clearing to the ice. Been a nice rink this year - until an hour after this latest snowfall - some nuggethead drove his truck right over it and created slop tracks in it.

LOL + 1

After the little snow storm and warmer weather - there was actually standing water puddles on the lake. It's really slushy now.

I just googled a few and saw there's a variety of gizmos now. Things from scalers that attach to electric knives (like ez-scaler), to some tumble-drum that you drop your fish in and let it scale them just like a rock tumbler of sorts.

Is there anything out there except what I remember? Half hour with that and a 5 gal of pan fish, and everything is covered in scales and all sparkly. I grew up scaling and gutting panfish, filleting the bigger game fish - and have switched to all fillet since becoming an adult.

@#$!@#$ -- I want one. My Expedition rains on me.

It'll prevent hole freeze-up and bake you in it, too. I have a Clam Expedition and me and my son were fishing with our jackets off in sub-zero outside temps last year.

Tuesday has a high of 31.

My phone is also an FM radio and MP3 player, so it comes with me. I've learned, though, with my ice holes, I've cut a 5-gal pail into 1/3rds or 1/4ths, and use that as a sleeve on top of the hole, so if anything hits the ice and goes sliding around, it'll bounce off the side of the sleeve and not go into the hole. Pack snow around the sleeve, and then drop in a thermal tipup as a cover over the hole, and it helps keep my holes from freezing from day to day, too.

I wore my snowshoes (Tubbs with cleats) when I was out testing holes this last weekend. I'd still sink into the wet (although not nearly as much as I had with just my boots). I definitely agree they make traveling the snow easier; I do wonder how much more difficult a fall-through in the ice would be with a pair on, though.