I made it out onto North Pond today (arriving a little before 11 AM) and joined a group of five other guys (three of whom were current or former DCR employees), who had arrived a couple hours earlier and set up straight out from the boat launch.
Another beautiful day - - sunny, not too windy, temps in the mid to upper 30's.
Relatively little snow cover on the Pond (generally only from 1" to 4", except on some of the edges where it drifted knee deep), and there was about 16" of hard black ice undeneath.
There were two other groups out one the Pond.
One group (a father with three or four kids who spent a good part of the time chatting with my group) was about midway off to the left from the boat launch toward the Big Rock, while the other group (two guys that I only spoke to briefly) had set up a bit further past them.
Fishing was slow. Of the roughly dozen fishermen out there, I only saw three fish caught the entire day - - all by my party.
All three of the fish caught were browns . . . one each about 12" long caught by two of my compadres (which they graciously donated and I gratefully accepted), and a smaller one about 10" long that I was fortunate enough to land on a dead stick and released unharmed,
There were a few other strikes where the fish stripped the bait from tip up (without setting off a flag) or dead stick (when the owner wasn't nearby), but no other real action to speak of.
I strapped on the cross-country skiis and worked in a couple loops of the pond.
We also ate well. I cooked a Polish Pu-Pu Platter (kielbasa with horseradish, pierogis with sour cream and lazy golembki) while some of the others served venison burgers with pepper jack cheese (topped with kimchi in my case) and (later in the afternoon) venison tenderloin.
I also had some sriracha covered peanuts and an green apple chased down with a coffee porter (since it was a BYOB affair).
After the rest of my group left (a little before 5 PM), I heated up a pot of coffee and fished without any results until a little after 6 PM.