Bigtoad
01-04-2011, 10:00 AM
Was out at Swan Lake near Valleyview on the weekend and started off in front of the campground. There was some slush sitting on the ice and even though the ice was over 12" it was full of air pockets and snow. Despite that, people were still driving onto that side.
We wanted to get away from the people and try for some virgin fish so we moved across the bay. As we were walking across, we noticed a lot of big (size of kitchen table) pock-marks in the snow where the snow had melted. We avoided walking on them. I was walking first and suddenly the ice broke and I dropped 2 inches hitting the ice below. There was a layer of at least an inch of water, covered by an inch or two of ice that I had broken through. Wasn't a good feeling but the ice below was still 12" so we kept going.
We fished there for a while and then headed back across before dark. As we were walking along, we came up beside a spot about as big as a table that had no snow whatsoever and was just bare ice. In the middle looked to be a hole in the ice that you could drop a 5 gallon bucket through. It had what appeared to be a thin skin of ice over it but looked to just have water underneath. We took a shovel and just tapped it on the ice over the whole and it broke and there was just water underneath... no ice!
So basically, there was a hole big enough to fall into in the middle of the lake! There weren't any tracks of any kind around so it must have happened naturally. I've been to Swan twice before in the winter and never experienced the slush on top of the ice or the mystery sink holes.
As we came back across, all 3 of us were quite rattled, however, the guys in the trucks with big roaring fires 15 feet away from the vehicles parked next to each other kept right on enjoying their day. YIKES!!!
PS - oh, and we caught some nice fish but noticed there weren't nearly the number of big fish this year as years past. EVEN THOUGH THE REGS SAY YOU CAN KEEP 5 FISH OF ANY SIZE, PLEASE ONLY KEEP A COUPLE SMALL/MEDIUM FISH AND THROW BACK THE BIG ONES! It's a good rule of thumb for fishing anywhere.
Cheers.
We wanted to get away from the people and try for some virgin fish so we moved across the bay. As we were walking across, we noticed a lot of big (size of kitchen table) pock-marks in the snow where the snow had melted. We avoided walking on them. I was walking first and suddenly the ice broke and I dropped 2 inches hitting the ice below. There was a layer of at least an inch of water, covered by an inch or two of ice that I had broken through. Wasn't a good feeling but the ice below was still 12" so we kept going.
We fished there for a while and then headed back across before dark. As we were walking along, we came up beside a spot about as big as a table that had no snow whatsoever and was just bare ice. In the middle looked to be a hole in the ice that you could drop a 5 gallon bucket through. It had what appeared to be a thin skin of ice over it but looked to just have water underneath. We took a shovel and just tapped it on the ice over the whole and it broke and there was just water underneath... no ice!
So basically, there was a hole big enough to fall into in the middle of the lake! There weren't any tracks of any kind around so it must have happened naturally. I've been to Swan twice before in the winter and never experienced the slush on top of the ice or the mystery sink holes.
As we came back across, all 3 of us were quite rattled, however, the guys in the trucks with big roaring fires 15 feet away from the vehicles parked next to each other kept right on enjoying their day. YIKES!!!
PS - oh, and we caught some nice fish but noticed there weren't nearly the number of big fish this year as years past. EVEN THOUGH THE REGS SAY YOU CAN KEEP 5 FISH OF ANY SIZE, PLEASE ONLY KEEP A COUPLE SMALL/MEDIUM FISH AND THROW BACK THE BIG ONES! It's a good rule of thumb for fishing anywhere.
Cheers.