Lake Waconia Ice Update 12-07-13

It's time to get ice fishing!  The ice on Lake Waconia has been getting thicker and thicker by the day. Thanks to the sub-zero cold, we have better ice early than we've seen in many years.  Over 80% of the lake froze over last Wednesday, 11/27, which included parts of Waconia Bay and everything north and east of it. Wagener's Bay had been frozen a few days prior to that, and therefore has some thicker ice because of it.

We've drilled a number of holes checking ice in front of the marina to Waconia Bay and also by the walleye hole between the marinas.  We've found ice ranging from 7 to 10 inches.  The variance in ice thickness is due to the snow we received on Wednesday, 12/4. Thankfully, much of that snow got saturated by water, and froze to the existing ice adding inches to our measurements. The areas with 7 inches had little to no frozen slush and were generally good clear "black" ice.  The cloudier ice is still very good, but the extra top few inches are the frozen slush.

We haven't done a thorough lake-wide check yet, but hope to do so this upcoming week.  Since the ice is increasing by the day, we're starting to see some permanent houses make their way to the lake, and people starting to use ATV's and snowmobiles.  Since we haven't been all over the lake, we stress to still use caution and pay extra attention when venturing out.