Miners Bay and area ice & fishing report

[boatman]

Friday:

 

Drove to Miner's Bay and saw one portable hut on the ice. We tested the ice anyway and found the needle bar would penetrate the ice on the first blow everytime. That means the ice was less than 3 inches and not safe for travel let alone fishing. We then drove to 12 mile and found about 2.5" of ice near shore. Lyle from the Red Umbrella ice huts told us he threw a rock off the point and it broke through the ice. So no fishing 12 mile for a while. Next stop was Big East. We found about 4-5" of white ice. So finally we were fishing. After a rapid flurry of timid nimblers we had no more action for the next few hours. The splake were very hook shy. Unfortunately, we weren't geared up for this since we had expected to fish sticks and spreaders for Lakers. On the way home we decide to hit Maple Lake and take a look. There was about 3" of good black ice about 30m from shore. We could see that some people had been fishing farther out, but we decided it wasn't safe. After a long day of driving and fishing we left skunked.

 

Saturday:

 

Remember Friday? We did too. Drank beer and watched TV.

 

Sunday:

 

After a good day of over -15 deg temps we decided that Miner's Bay might have enough ice. When we arrived there were only a couple portable huts out on the ice. We found 3-4" of ice (we actually measured it) in the clear areas and less under the snow covered spots. It was marginal, but we decided to set up the hut on one of the clear areas. We caught our first fish as we dropped the first line down. We then caught the next fish as the second line went down. In total we caught 5 lakers, 1 whitefish and missed a couple others. As the morning went on more and more people arrived. Everyone seemed to be having success. Unfortunately, as more people arrived and began to poke holes in the ice the structural integrity of the ice began to diminish. We decided to leave once the ice started to crack. Mind you, these weren't pressure cracks from the lake making ice, but rather from the load on it. When we left we counted 16 parties and more were coming. I hope there were no accidents out there today, but with all those people packed onto one small area of such thin ice it was an accident waiting to happen.

 

Be safe out there and remember that no fish is worth dying for.

 

Boatman

[Gerritt]

thanks for the report man! glad to see you got into em

 

Gerritt.

[Joey]

Good golly that's a scary report. I can only imagine you being out there seeing people coming and hearing the ice crack from too much weight *shudder*

 

Thanks for the report and lets all pray for colder weather and more ice.

 

Joey

[mattyk]

Thanks for the report. That ice cracking sound can be pretty scary.

[jeffw]

I'm heading up to miners tommorrow and was wondering if you could give me a rough idea of the depth you were fishing. Never fished there before so any help would be gretly appreciated.

Cheers Jeff

[fishindevil]

great to hear a nice report comming from haliburton ,well the condidtions still sound a little dicey up there,but ya caught some nice lakers...cheers guys what time is dinner???

[boatman]

We were fishing 40' exactly. The bite was best before 10am. With these cold temps the ice should be ok this week.