IceShanty.com's Ice Fishing Community
Iowa => Ice Fishing Iowa => Topic started by: New User Name on Feb 20, 2018, 07:22 PM
-
I'm not sure, but the ice season might already be done south of I-80 in eastern Iowa for the year.
I fished a pond in northern Johnson County yesterday (Monday) morning. The shoreline ice was firm, no cracking and sagging. Six or seven inches of decent ice farther out. The rain and above-freezing temps (highs in the mid-fifties by afternoon) had already gotten here, but I figured I would be able to come back and fish the same holes yesterday evening.
Nope. This pond, which has a lot of runoff coming in to it, had three or four feet of open water all around it at 4:30 yesterday, thanks to the steady rain and rising water level. I did not have a plank to walk, so no fishing for me. Had I been able to cross the open water, I doubt that I would have still found six inches of ice beyond it.
I looked at several other ponds on my way to and from work in CR today. The ones with less runoff don't look as bad, but every one of them had open water around the edges. It rained pretty hard over night and this morning at times, so the ice still there now took a beating.
Bigger water like Macbride may still have safe ice for walking (I have not checked it), but if I were to try it I would be very careful.
It is cooling off outside now, and of course it is still February, but I doesn't look like southeast Iowa will get enough cold weather to refreeze those small ponds I looked at yesterday and today.
The good news is the ice in northern Iowa or southern MN and Wisconsin should be good for a couple weeks or so yet.
-
The forecast for N.W. Iowa has zero days for ice melting weather. Starting to worry about the shallow bodies of water if this happens. Plenty of ice up here, 60's yesterday in S.E. Iowa, never hit 20 here and below 0 again tonight.
-
Definitely more than the normal north-south differences in Iowa ice conditions right now.
The snow we got in southeast Iowa a week or two ago, probably 8" total around here, did us no favors, as it stopped the cold temps at that time from making more ice. Farther north in Iowa there was more ice to start with two weeks ago, as is normal, and then that round of snow we got mostly missed the northern part of the state. They made ice while we made slush.
To finish things off we got a bunch of rain yesterday and today, while the areas north of us got freezing rain or snow. Temps down here are forecast to be above ice-making for the next two weeks, while northern Iowa looks to mostly maintain the good ice they have now.
-
It's supposed to snow Thursday Friday and Saturday in NWIA. It will be awhile before it thaws here.