Merry Christmas!!    This morning  I will be pulling out the first of our smaller rentals on 7-8 inches of ice with the Jeep.  Tonight and tomorrow we should be making some good ice with the temperatures dropping below zero.  Our plans here are to celebrate Christmas this evening and tomorrow with family and start up Wednesday pulling houses where we can safely.  Starting with smaller houses first.  We will be checking the ice in all of our areas we go to Wednesday and decide about people driving their vehicles out or not.   I’m not comfortable with it until I see 12 inches of ice.  Especially this year when the top 2-3 inches is junk and has little or no strength to it. What looks like 8 is really only 6 strong inches and a lot of fishermen don’t know or think of that unfortunately.  For now I would like if everyone coming out of here would  plan on ATV’s for the weekend until we see  what it looks like later in the week.

Fishermen yesterday did ok with Perch activity in some basin areas and some Walleyes.  Overnight two fishermen had a good luck with the Walleyes and also caught a 40 inch Northern and  some nice sized Perch.  So things are looking up.  I’m sure fishing patterns and spots are going to change along with the Zebra Mussels , but we can too.   Anyways……… I’m not going there on Christmas!!!

Keep a tight line!!

Eddy

Yesterday we had about 15 groups of fishermen out and everyone spread out, trying different depths and structure.   By the end of the day the deeper spots had the better action for Walleyes. Perch were most consistent NW of Spider Island although size was not too impressive.   About lunchtime after the sun had been out for awhile the main lake ice pushed and we ended up with a pressure ridge/cracks about a mile out which I put out ramps for on what will be Graveyard Road and Tullibee Road so fishermen could get back across safely.  A couple of fishermen were almost on top of it when it pushed and made themselves  some memories, but everyone was ok.

Hoping that the next two or three days cold weather drive the ice down so we can get going with some pulling of smaller houses. I’m not going to say if we are going to be driving by the weekend or not yet.  I’ll see what the ice looks like by the day after Christmas, and we will go from there.   For now, plan on ATV’s even if we get your house out.

Merry Christmas!!  Eddy

Yesterday we got ice checked and stakes where our roads will eventually be to the Graveyard, Ray’s, Pope’s, Gull, and Banana Reefs.  We also got out the East Bar,(gravel).  Today we are checking and staking to the Tundra and Tullibee Hole and and south towards North Twin.  Ice is at the least 5inches and some places we seen almost 8-9.  Most common ice depth was around 7 inches.

The few fishermen that were out yesterday, did not have much action.  Either due to the high pressure or ??  So far this a.m. we’ve had alot more fishermen going out and we are encouraging them to experiment with depths instead of staying shallow like we would typically do this time of year.  We’ll see if that helps.

Merry Christmas!!     Eddy