Closing out the season

So reading the weather report on November 29th noting that we were supposed to get 4 inches of snow on the 30th, so like any sane 40+ year old I decided to go fishing. I met my buddy DVD at 6:00am to make a run up to Wisconsin to fish a small lake west of Madison. Usually it's a 2.5 hour ride and we figured we would get up there before the snow started falling. Temperature was about 28 degrees when we left.



As we got about 1/2 way there the snow that wasn't supposed to start until after noon started coming down. We were driving DVD's rig with his boat and since I had never driven with him I was interested to see how he would handle the weather. Trailering a boat on slick roads can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, and I was happy to see that DVD was conscious of the conditions and kept us at a safe speed. I have a few buddies that would drive through that kind of crap as if there were no issues. If you have ever fish tailed a boat trailer I can tell you it can be a bit scary.


Anyways, we got to the park at around 10 am and started heading to the landing. As we headed down the final hill the lake was covered with snow. Well, there is only one way to cover a lake with snow and that is to first cover it in Ice. For those of you who don't have a clue, if the ice is to thick a boat has problems floating on the water, it just sort of lies on top. As we geared up, when you see one of the pictures I would like to note I am not color blind, I was happy of two things. one the ice wasn't to think and two it wasn't my boat.



Probably 75% of the lake was iced over, but we dumped in the boat anyway and proceeded to break through about 200 yards of ice to get to some open water and did this a couple of times to get to where we wanted to fish. It snowed most of the day, got windy towards the end and was an absolute disaster on the drive home through a blizzard.

Caught this nice 36" musky. Notice the Christmassy Green and Red jackets.

Me enjoying the snow, wearing just about everything I own. One more layer and I probably wouldn't have been able to put my arms down. Damn there is a lot of grey in the goatee.

A good shot from DVD capturing the snow and the ice. At this point we are about as far away from the landing as you can get. You can see the ice.

All in all it was a great day on the water. Thanks to DVD who does read this blog occasionally, which means I am up to 4 confirmed readers.