Ice getting much thinner than I had thought.

Had a Chance to get out and do a little ice fishing on Sat. Since my fishing buddy had a injured foot, we decided to stay local and find a lake where he would not have to walk real far to fish. We decided on a lake in the Annandale area. When we got there the 1st thing I noticed was the edges seemed to be pulled a few feet away from the shore. Not only at the landing but all up and down that shoreline. Sure enough, The 1st steep was into open water and the 2nd one onto the ice broke and the 3rd landed on solid enough ice to stand on. After walking out about 10 yards I noticed that the cracks in the ice only appeared to be about 6-7″ deep. I was not totally sure if that was the correct ice thickness or not. Decided to stop and drill a hole to confirm. Sure enough it was only 6-7′ thick. Drilled many holes much further out on the lake, all were the same 6-7′ thick. I knew the local ice was not anywhere near normal, but was a little shocked that was all there was. Unlike a normal year where once the true ice out time starts and there is 30-40″ of ice to have to melt, This year there is going to be FAR less to melt. Think once it starts the ice will go real fast. Side note, We did manage enough Crappies for a nice meal of fried fish for the superbowl so that was a positive.

I took the boys out yesterday on a 5 acre trout pond in northern Wisconsin.

It had just a skiff of snow on top and I was very surprised to find it had only 7″ of ice

Crazy

Fished a lake in west central mn on Saturday. 10″ of ice but the shorelines were bad, we got on but barely. The 2nd lake we checked out there had 20yds of open water around a good portion of the lake.
Fished locally yesterday on 7″ but the shoreline was in better shape there.
It won’t take much to be ice free this spring.