I went on Saturday to drill holes for a Scout troop. The edge was firm enough that folks were getting on
the ice just fine, even with snowmobiles.
In the pictures, anywhere you see snow on top, the ice is 24 inches thick, with a solid, dark 18-inch base.
However, where you see slick ice it is no more than about 3 inches thick and not high-quality ice (mostly not clear, with bubbles, etc.)
I didn't see any places where the slick part was less than 30 or 40 feet wide. It won't take much warm weather at all to see that gap turn to open water, but the 24-inch ice cap in the middle is going to last a long while.
The place to get your feet wet was just onto the shore, where the rising edge water hides under the snow.
The road to the dam was icy ruts in the morning and slushy ruts in the afternoon, where some trucks had busted the drifts earlier. It's passable, but it's a mess and could very easily drift closed again.
Fishing was fairly slow. The bite was really light. We got the kids into a few small fish. Folks were catching mostly small ones, but we saw one 3 pounder caught. My last chance for the online tournament but I came up short. I wish our December fish would have been eligible!
Pretty much all the bites came on worm/corn or worm/egg. Had a few lookers at my jig offerings but couldn't find anything they would bite. Like I said, real light. Momentary bouncing pole tip, then gone. Pull it up to find the egg or corn was missing.
I fished 7:00 to 2:00 and started to get (miss) more frequent bites as I was packing up.
I was glad to see the water coming back up, but it has a ways to go yet. I probably won't return until April or May. If you want to get on the hard deck here, I think you'd better do it soon.
