How far north?

[ski_otter]

How far north do I need to head to get on a lake without using waiters or long planks?

[Rick G]

I am in St. Cloud, some of the bigger lakes in this area still have good shoreline ice. The Brainerd area would be a little better though.

[BoxMN]

I saw trucks on Serpent lake In Crosby on Friday night and sleds were driving around on a small lake in crosslake today. I did not go out but I do know pretty strong ice on shore still here. Be safe, but decent ice here. I went for sled ride yesterday but not on ice.

[pathogen]

Trucks driving around on the ice in the Crosslake area. Best bet is a lake with an access that is not on the south or east side. Some accesses on south or east sides are sketchy even though once you are on the ice it is still a good solid 2 ft thick in most areas....with the usual slush and snow on top.....

[CANOPY SAM]

No shortage of waiters up here in northern Minnesota, but I really prefer a friendly waitress. You won't NEED your waders up here for a while.

[ozzie]

heck even in the zimmerman area you can walk on the lakes without waders...well some of them

[GIANT1]

still hard water fishing in Wright county !!!!

[curley]

fished a lake Saturday by Onamia, shoreline was good and ice was 30".

[Ybone]

Wouldn't the south and east sides be better than the north or west? The north shore gets the most sun.

[monstermoose78]

Ybone I agree with you on this, but any access that is in full sun gets beat up.

[dougger222]

Fished 5 of the last 10 days on lakes ranging from Rush City Luck, WI to Webster WI and have not needed a ladder, waders, or plank to get on the ice.

Like others have mentioned the shore line you access and the type of shore line makes a big difference. Right now seeing East shorelines starting to get ate up but the lake we got on this morning we got on the East side and there was enough ice to take a wheeler out. Early this week walked off a South shore with a lot of rocks and there was good ice still.

BTW, fishing has been pretty good!

[Desperado]

Fished RUSH LAKE (Pine County MN) APR 20, 2013

about 12 feet of open water between shore and ice

water was only about a foot deep when we got to the ice

we were able to just drive through the water and right up onto the ice

about six to eight inches of snow on top ... with one to three inches of slush in the bottom half of the snow layer

There were two guys out there on foot; mid-shin high dairy barn boots would be sufficient to both; get out to the ice and then deal with the slush on the ice

[Desperado]

wish we would have taken a photo of the back end of the Wilcraft ... it was completely packed with slush

[Desperado]

still Twenty inches of decent ice

although when we drilled our holes, the slush cone was "snow cone" consistency

[dougger222]

If you were on East could have been my cousin and friend you saw out there.

[Stick in Mud]

Heck, there's still plenty of good ice around St Cloud, too. I was out on Saturday, walked right on with no problems.

[pathogen]

Ybone, I mis-typed. I did mean the south and west side accesses deteriorate less quickly than the north and east. Sorry!

[paceman]

While driving around scouting for turkeys I saw a lake with 5 full sized trucks on this past saturday. Just south of D.L.