1-27 Clinton is open... Sort of
The marina ramp and most all of the lake were wide open yesterday afternoon and there appeared to be only a little ice covering the far south bank. There were plenty of boats on the water so we headed up the Wakarusa arm to fish the channel edges. However in the 4-hours we were out there, the SE wind had pushed the entire remaining ice sheet over to the north side, completely sealing off the main lake from the island over to the north shore line and marina. I assumed that we would be able to break our way through without any problems, but the edges of the ice shelf were about 2" thick and quite a bit more further in. We eventually made it back, but here are a couple of lessons learned:
1. Always keep an eye on your exit route whenever there is any ice on the lake.
2. A 16.5" Aluminum Lowe Deep-V can successfully break through 2-3" of ice (or at least old ice).
3. A 16.5" Aluminum Lowe Deep-V CANNOT break through 4" of ice.
4. When you hit 4" of ice, the boat will slide ride up on top of the ice leaving you high and dry (about as high as the pucker factor:yikes) and you feel like a stupid polar bear stuck out on iceberg.
I was able to reverse hard enough to pull us back off the ice and back out through our 'channel' and find some more of the 2" thick stuff to get back closer to shore. The ice near shore remained about 2" the rest of the way, so we claimed victory eventually.
PS - The fishing was great. (2) 20-fish limits with enough ease to be fairly picky about the ones kept. All caught relating to structure on the channel edges in 20-24 fow.
