Fish-Hawk.Net

Has anyone been out there yet? Must be some good ice near shore, it's been cold enough.

I've been looking at the Britannia yacht club cam everyday and it keeps opening up, yesterday it looked solid all over but it opened up again overnight even with the cold weather. I haven't checked shirley's bay yet but i wouldn't think the ice is safe yet, some back lakes might have good enough ice to walk on but be safe bud.

http://byc.ca/webcam/cam.php

http://ottawarivercam.ca/

I would be extra cautious ice hasn't had a lot of time to form yet even though it's been cold we need some minus temps for a good week before we can venture on ice..... this is the time of year where accidents happen hope i don't read about you in the front page of the sun,,,,,patience bro patience ,,,,,it's coming

It'll be a while until Shirleys is ready. Stopped by there on Sunday with wifey on way to the movies. Completly open, there wasn't even any ice right on the shore line. Bit of ice on the rocks but none of the water had any ice. There was a warm breeze and the water was glass. Wish I was out in the tinny nailing some pike. Even though it was cold yesterday there was absolutely no ice on Sunday, we'll need a couple of weeks of constant below 0.

good to know keep us posted with reports guys should not be too much longer the temps are going down to minus 10 or so for a bunch of nights next week.

LiplessCrank wrote:I've been looking at the Britannia yacht club cam everyday and it keeps opening up, yesterday it looked solid all over but it opened up again overnight even with the cold weather. I haven't checked shirley's bay yet but i wouldn't think the ice is safe yet, some back lakes might have good enough ice to walk on but be safe bud.

http://byc.ca/webcam/cam.php

http://ottawarivercam.ca/

Thanks for these links, I'm checking them everyday now in the hopes that the waves stop moving... Thought it did once until I realized I was looking at a picture instead of a video

reboot wrote:

LiplessCrank wrote:I've been looking at the Britannia yacht club cam everyday and it keeps opening up, yesterday it looked solid all over but it opened up again overnight even with the cold weather. I haven't checked shirley's bay yet but i wouldn't think the ice is safe yet, some back lakes might have good enough ice to walk on but be safe bud.

http://byc.ca/webcam/cam.php

http://ottawarivercam.ca/

Thanks for these links, I'm checking them everyday now in the hopes that the waves stop moving... Thought it did once until I realized I was looking at a picture instead of a video

The weather is looking good for tonight, i'm hoping to see some ice on the cams by morning

STILL NO ICE???!!!! I'm going to go INSANE SOON!!! MUST FISH... ASAP!! lol

tbone1088 wrote:Has anyone been out there yet? Must be some good ice near shore, it's been cold enough.

Took a drive to see today and it looked like the top of the water was a thin sheet of ice so hopefully it will now start to build up. We are still a few weeks away from good ice.

Anyone been out since we got this snow??? Wondering if this snow is freezing up, if so we might have some ice quality issues

If your brave go out with a 1" auger bit on your drill and make a huge number of swiss-cheese holes to let water from below come up onto the ice, flooding it and letting the snow freeze into a solid layer of 'good' ice.

We did this on a smaller lake back in the mountains of BC, mainly because of huge snow-fall amounts that would prevent the clear ice from ever freezing right unless someone flooded it every few days.

Kinda spooky when you're standing on 4" of ice and drill a teeny small hole ... hear a crack and watch water gush up out of the hole.
It works though on small bodies of water.

tbone1088 wrote:Anyone been out since we got this snow??? Wondering if this snow is freezing up, if so we might have some ice quality issues

ya i went and checked it out. most of the bay is covered with snow but the problem is that there was a thin layer of ice before the snow so now the snow is on top of the ice and creating a layer of insilation. there is somw darker patches half way out to the main channel so that would tell me that there isn't much freezing happening and we need several nights below -10 to make a difference out there. Last year i had my shack out Dec. 26th but i guarantee that won't happen this year.

that's what I was afraid of... hopefully the temps start to drop drastically to freeze it up some more. Worst thing you can have is a small layer of black ice and then a lot of snow, that ice is going to be very weak. Guess I will be waiting till after christmas, ice fishing sucks.

There's plenty of good ice you just gotta go look for it, and the river just ain't the place to find it. I was on 5-6" of solid black ice today, all the snow did was make it a little slushy.

Ya ice fishin sucks......at Shirley's! Like Brad said plenty of ice if you go looking for it! When I first started ice fishing I'd go to Shirley's. Once I stopped going to Shirley's I started to catch fish through the ice. Don't get me wrong early ice at sundown almost gaurenteed a couple walleye but the window is so small I don't fish there too much unless restricted by time.