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I can tell you this with 100% CERTAINTY......there will be weather.
Well here in western Pennsylvania we have a pretty short ice season even on a good year. We're lucky to get a month of ice anymore and that's usually mid January to mid February. Not looking good this year, was 60 degrees yesterday and the rest of this week looks warm. We'll get 2 or 3 cold days then a front comes through and it will rain. I jinxed myself by buying a shanty a few seasons ago. We haven't gotten good ice since I bought it.
Yeah, it is pretty upsetting to experience this year after year. Ask any ice fisherman if the earth is warming and you will not get a single argument against it. The reasons are still highly debatable I suppose.When this site was created, they devoted forums to states that had a bonafide ice fishing season. Now just 20 years later, it looks like forums for RI, NJ, WV, MD, IL, IN are not needed anymore. I do feel bad for them, hell I feel bad for myself with the ice fishing season having gone from as long as 4 months in my earlier years to maybe one longer than 2.5 months in the last decade
Most ice guys fish open water as well, and then there are the crowds that will fish open water but won't go out on ice. So people at the Southern edge of the receding ice belt aren't necessarily losing out. Of course, easier to say coming from a Canadian with no worries of not seeing any ice here in my lifetime...Up here, we had early ice from 2016 to 2019, mid November about 1 hour North from Montreal at elevation, to early December closer to home on smaller waterways. Then again in 2021.Last year slightly earlier than this year maybe 2 weeks difference, and that was alreay a warmer one. 2015 was the warmest I've logged since I started loggin my outings in 2008.
Quite a few reservoirs in Wyoming with good, solid ice.