Hi Folks, Still guiding the hard water. We received almost a foot of snow over the weekend. Great for winter activities. The snow pack makes moving around on the ice a bit difficult. The trout water I have been fishing has 7” of black ice covered by 10” of snow. The snow acts like an insulating blanket on top of the ice. Thus, there is water some water sandwiched between the snow and ice layer. A few cold nights will make the ice a little easier to move around on as it firms back up on the surface. Good boots are required. Snow shoes work fairly well for moving around. The benefit of the snow is that there are not many anglers ice fishing currently and it makes the ice quiet. When trout fishing through the ice, I like to set my baits right under the ice to 15’ down. I believe that if there is lots of activity on the ice, the fish can get a bit spooky. Every trout we landed yesterday was caught on bait right under the ice to 5’ down. It was a bright sunny day with a steady NW wind. We fished off a point in 30’ to 40’ of water. Still our sets were just under the ice in deep water. We were able to jig up a few rainbow smelt for bait. The trout eat smelt like candy. All of the smelt were caught just off the bottom on Hali Jigs tipped with maggots. One of the brown trout we caught was well over 20”. I did not measure the fish as we wanted to get it back in the water. A true beast! I would bet the fish weighed between 4lbs. and 5lbs. With current ice conditions, I think we will be able to ice fish for another 2 to 3 weeks. The long term weather does not look too warm. I will be walleye fishing later this week. Remember to clean your gear and keep the non-native species at home. Have Fun, Willy
