Saturday, for some, was good fishing.  I received many pictures throughout the afternoon of nice-sized Walleye, quite a few in the slot, and one angler sent in a pic of a C/R 27″. Perch activity was ok, but a lot of throwbacks were reported.

In the morning, when the sun came out, and the warmer winds started.  By noon, the ice had started “pushing,” and a new pressure ridge formed, running east and west north of the Banana Reef headed towards the SE side of Hennepin Island and ran west staying north of the Tundra. It stayed just south of the Tullibee Hole and cut it off, so that might not be accessible for a while. As afternoon went on some new cracks formed from Pope’s to Spider Island. and going west from there. Fortunately, they were small, 2″ to 4″. We filled them with snow, and they healed some overnight but cracked open a little this morning when the guys checked at 6:00 am this morning.

With the big variations of temps from above freezing and sun and then dropping into the teens at night, the ice, with no snow cover, is constantly going to be expanding and contracting every 24 hrs., creating cracks or moving pressure ridges.  And by the looks of the weather forecast for this last week of the season it will continue to do that.

For that reason we are going back to single axle wheelhouses pulled only by ATV, UTV’s.  Weight limits for individual vehicle going out to rentals or portables will be dropped to 5000lbs.  Travel some some areas will be limited.  Running 10,000lb plus rigs on 16″ of ice is borderline in a “normal” year if there isn’t any cracks, and it’s cold enough to freeze them right away, but with forecasted weather this coming week we are going have we are not going to have our customers take that chance.

Keep a Tight Line!!

Eddy