CT,

Thanks for the scouting trip. You were right and this trip was one of the first I can remember with totally good roads both ways around Christmas. The whole family was together on Christmas day and I headed back yesterday, one day early due to forecasts of snow showers and flurries for the SW part of Minnesota and the adjacent NW corner of Iowa. By Christmas night I was watching the forecasts closely and missed whatever developed.

One cousin and his family were back in NW Iowa from their home in Southern Indiana going right back into the teeth of the mess, after already having had an ice related accident on the way out in Central Iowa. Nobody got hurt in that one thankfully, but their family car ended up in the shop and they had to rent one to get back to his mother's for the holiday. I hope they make it home safely, perhaps even staying over an extra day, but that may not even help them as hard and as frequently as this year's storms have hammered along the route they have to take. It seems to me that when the storms tend to come up from the Pacific out of California like they have this winter so far, Iowa and point east and south of us tend to get hammered a whole lot more than we do here in the Twin Cities. Our worst Minnesota storms come down out of the Prairie Provinces of Canada.

I took HWY 60 down and I90 back to the Cities with totally clear and dry highways both directions. (I90 from HWY 71 out of Spirit Lake, since I normally stop at the True Fishing shop in Spirit Lake for a breather on the way back and that is a straight shop down Iowa 9 east out of the town my mother lives in, and this time also at Cabelas on I35 armed with a couple of gift cards.

At Cabelas I was going to look at the Eagle Claw inline ice reel, but they didn't have them, didn't stock them and won't. So probably I didn't miss anything anyway. I did pick up one of the Frabill titanium spring bobbers though, since it was already essentially free,and a couple of jigging raps and Swedish Pimples. But 12 bucks for a spring bobber is still a bite. BTW Cabelas both stocked the Mitchell Meat Stick and has a copy under their own name now of the extreme noodle tip style of that and the PowerNoodle. At this point in the season though I do not trust myself to accurately judge the softness of the tip. I tend to pick stiffer tips than I mean to, until I transition from open water rods to the much softer tips on the ice rods I prefer; I have enough rods at this point anyway, although I almost fell in love with a very soft, sweet Fenwick 5' open water rod at the Pure Fishing Outlet. The price was right too, but like ice rods I already have enough open water ones with the right actions. Not very often that I do not pick up something at the Outlet, but this time not.