With Spring just around the corner, our late ice is quickly melting. Wheelers are beginning to bog down in the slush on Canyon Ferry. Pressure ridges are forming, and the shoreline ice is thinning out as the lake is still dropping.
Please do not become a statistic. No fish is worth dying for. Late season ice can be the sketchiest ice of the year.
Montana lost our early ice fishing in most of the state. I normally am on the local ice by December. This year it wasn’t until January that I felt safe on the ice. A few weeks of really cold weather thickened the ice nicely. Trucks and wheelers felt safe to drive over the 20 plus inch ice.
What I am seeing now is that the surface ice is melting on warmer days. This means that the subsurface ice is also decreasing. Most ice is still plenty thick, but ice thickness is also inconsistent.
When I drilled my ice holes last Friday, I discovered that each hole was different. Within my circle of holes, some were 14 inches and others were 20 inches. That was in a 20-yard circle of my chair. On the way out, the ice had an open water crack 75 yards off the shoreline. On this day we could easily step over it but…
When Handy Randy and I left the ice, we were walking through puddles of water on top of the ice. Shoreline ice is the first to go. The lakes are dropping, and large areas of ice are cracked, and laying on the bottom.
On lakes like Hyalite, the water is sitting on top of the ice. When you cut your holes, you end up standing in water a few inches deep. The headwaters area can be frozen, and the water flows over top of the ice.
Shorelines are completely exposed. Dragging ice sleds across a few hundred yards of rocky shoreline is tough. When you add pounds of fish, the drag becomes harder.
Fortunately, shoreline water is shallow. If you break through the ice, you can stand up if you are not injured. Hypothermia is always a concern.
If you think that ice is unsafe, you are a genius. Believe your concern. Open water is here. If you see ice condition requests online, respond honestly. You may be saving a life.
Some of the best fishing happens when the shorelines are open water, and you can cast to the floating ice. Fish cruise the edges and fishing can be fast and furious. Now you can safely fish from the shoreline.
Hot fishing will happen soon!
Montana Grant
