In Towne Marina Lake Waconia Ice Report - 11/30/18 - We remain temporarily closed

We thank everyone for your patience with us while we look forward to getting our ice fishing season underway hopefully sooner than later. We will remain closed at this time while we wait for colder weather to improve Lake Waconia’s ice conditions. We hope to open for the season next weekend if things improve, but we must see a significant change for the better for that to happen. This has been an interesting start to the ice season. Early ice can sometimes be challenging, and this year seems to be one of those years. We were hopeful that with the early November cold, the lake would lock up evenly with consistent thicknesses, but that is just not the case.

The rain and wind over Thanksgiving weekend caused some major open areas scattered throughout the lake. The cold temps this week helped freeze most of those open areas up, but then the snow came. The snow is a problem for a couple of reasons. It hides bad spots and insulates the ice, which makes it more difficult to see ice thickness transitions and also hampers the ice growth. It’s very problematic this year, because where the ice is newly formed, it is dangerously thin and now covered in snow. Unfortunately, some of these newly formed areas are scattered all over the lake.

We have done an ice check this week in front of our marina, to Waconia Bay and out to the “walleye hole” between the marinas. We were out as the snow was falling (earlier this week) and carefully tried to mark as much of the extremely thin areas as we could, but it’s impossible to mark them all. Where the older ice is in Waconia Bay there is as much as 4.5 to 6.5 inches, but also had areas we marked that had been open recently with as little as ½ inch as well. In front of the marina on the way to the “walleye hole” there is mixed chunk ice that is up to 5 to 6.5 inches, but beyond the chunk ice it ranges between 4 or 5 inches with cracks and seeping water. One of those open spots we marked as best as we could from early in the week on the hump north of the “walleye hole” is only ½ inch and hidden by snow. While it’s possible to get out fishing in some of these areas described above, you have to be very diligent.

We haven’t checked ice elsewhere, but know what we saw earlier in the week from land and that was a vast area of open water from Center Reef, over Keg’s and to the east shore that will have a very thin skim of ice on it hidden under snow and will remain unmarked as it’s far too expansive.

Basically, if you’re looking to get ice fishing on Lake Waconia, use extreme caution. We haven’t seen anyone fishing out in front of us as of this writing. Don’t just assume the ice ahead of you is the same thickness as what you might be standing on. Chisel ahead of yourself and trust your instinct if something looks different.

Let’s hope the projected snow this weekend stays away and cold temps help improve conditions. We’ll update sometime next week and hopefully have better news to report!

In Towne Marina Lake Waconia Ice Report - 11/26/18 - We remain temporarily closed

We hope you had a great Thanksgiving Weekend! We remain closed while we wait for better ice conditions. With the rain we had most of Black Friday and the warmer temps and wind through Saturday, there are now several areas of open water on Lake Waconia.

The largest open water area extends from parts of Center Reef and goes all the way to Reinke’s Bay and to the south encompassing Keg’s Reef toward the island. Another large open area is east of the island and extends south encompassing all of Cemetery Reef and beyond. There are also several random smaller open spots on the eastern fringe of Waconia Bay and east of the marina out to the “walleye hole”. We also noticed a couple of small open spots just north of the Wagener’s Bay access as well. All of these areas we spotted from land. Basically, there are scattered open spots in several locations.

As of this post (Monday 11/26/18 at 11 am), there is still plenty of wind keeping the open areas wavy and unable to freeze. To be quite honest, despite the cold, we feel the open water areas are getting bigger. Because of this, we will be holding off on doing our first ice walk until a later time. Let’s hope for much cooler temperatures and calmer winds to re-freeze the lake and start building ice thickness!

In Towne Marina Lake Waconia Update - 11/20/18 - Happy Thanksgiving!

Winter is here early! The colder than usual weather has locked up most of Lake Waconia with ice. However as of 11/20, from the marina vantage point, there are some areas that remain open.

We look forward to spending this holiday weekend with our families and we hope you have a great Thanksgiving as well!

We expect to do an ice check later next week depending on the upcoming weather. Our shop will remain temporarily closed for now, and we will update you with opening hours as soon as we know more. Thank you!