Ice Unsafe to Walk on Having Melted From Underneath

Gray instead of white.

I rode up to Mount Hope Pond with a bucket of shiners and fatheads, hoping for nice trout, pickerel, and bass. With 280 trout stocked into 18 surface acres of water, it's a possibility. Of course I knew I might find the ice unsafe, but I really expected it wouldn't be just yet. Again, I pulled into the large parking lot as I did once earlier in the ice season, and within seconds the pond came into view. It didn't look good. That gray off-color, rather than white, signaled to me that I probably wasn't staying here long. I quickly decided to first approach the pond with just my splitting bar. That no one else fished it, and Fridays might draw more anglers than other weekdays do, was also a definite sign that things weren't good. 

Of course, I had to check it out. And I stepped out on the ice a couple of feet from the beach, my feet getting moist because my waterproof boots aren't living up to that description, and I need to try to repair or replace them. Then I reached forward and whacked my way through the ice with two thrusts of my splitting bar. I did this repeatedly out of curiosity, but there was no hope. Three inches on top was slush, and maybe three or four inches underneath rotted out. 

I'm getting older and forgetful, it's true. How many times I've walked a plank to get onto a lake over the melt at the edge late in the ice season, I don't recall, but if I had had a plank, I might have walked it, and then tested the ice, say, eight feet from the edge of the beach. Then, I might have found hope existed yet. But while I was at Mount Hope, it didn't occur to me to think of the possibility. 

It's interesting to me how, quite apparently, the ice melts from underneath. I noticed what clearly seemed to be the phenomenon at Lake Aeroflex two days ago, when, by all we could judge, the ice had melted about four inches from underneath, having been a foot thick Thursday the week before. I only hedge from certain judgment because I want some peer review to back up what I've seen. Here, too. With three inches of slush and four inches of striated rot underneath, that's a total of seven inches. Oliver Round was up here a week ago when it was 15 inches thick.

That rot is a curiosity. I always refer to the striations, but most people speak of honeycombing. I recall once being out on Lake Hopatcong with my son when things began to get sketchy. This was almost two decades ago. The surface was soft, there was about four inches of striated ice, and three or four inches of hard ice underneath that rot, so I considered the ice safe and we fished. But if it melts from underneath, as it clearly seems to, why wasn't it striated all the way through? And besides, how do warmer temps permeate cold, hard ice to rot it down towards that surface underneath? 

I've paid attention to many ice conditions over the decades, but I've never noticed until two days ago that ice seems to thin out from underneath. I've seen plenty of that striated rot--which proves much of the whole mass is affected by the melt--but I've never had the opportunity to measure such differences as a foot and eight inches, 15 inches and about seven inches, as these recent outings have afforded me.  

My splitting bar head was welded onto the iron shaft, a cut having accommodated that chisel head.

Mount Hope Pond Revisited

 

Father and Son Who Know How to Ice Fish

Naturally Oliver and I hit the ice confidently after last week. Nothing was happening after an hour or two, but I still felt confident. Despite my persistent feeling for the back of the lake, where there's not such pressure on the fish. We took position where we saw salmon caught last time, and also set a few devices where we caught the bass and lost the pickerel. 

Someone who Oliver and I had seen in the distance down lake came in. As he was about to pass by, I asked how he did.

"I set up over the deep water and got no hits from salmon or trout after four hours. So I moved into the weeds and caught a bunch of pickerel. None of them were good-sized, though."

Soon a father and son arrived. They proved to be some of the most knowledgeable ice fishermen I've spoken to. Oliver spoke to them independently of me, and he nailed it when he told me, "Goes to show what ice fishing a lake repeatedly, results in." 

True. But Oliver didn't mean that in any derogatory sense, and even if they only fish here, they're good. When they set three Jaw Jackers in shallow water right near the bank of three or four feet, possibly a little deeper if three or four feet is just the top of the weeds, I thought they didn't know what they were doing. I had set tip-ups near the bank but not that near--in eight and five feet of water closer to the steep drop-off than the bank. Within 15 minutes, they had a fish I thought at first was a pickerel, then bass...but I swore the fish looked like a trout. When the second fish got caught from the same hole, Oliver swore it was a trout. Soon we talked to them, and, yes, the fish were trout. They had set six other devices, pretty much all in very shallow weeds, and the son jigged.

In the middle of all this, Oliver and I still waiting on our fatheads and shiners, a bald eagle showed up. It took position in a tree. I approached with my 70-200mm zoom on my Niko D850, and before I could get a shot to crop, it flew off. The father told me, "It wants the trout. It'll be back."

A few other ice fishermen left the lake, all of them apparently skunked. I assume so because we watched whenever one of them tended his tip-ups. No fish. And I later learned the father and son had given another the two trout. And we never saw him catch any. 

Oliver had to leave at 5:00 and he left fishless. I stayed on into dusk, leaving the lot perhaps a little after 6:00. In the meantime, the eagle returned twice, and the second time, the son had caught another trout--they had three in total, lost some hits, and lost something big that "might have been a pickerel," according to the father. 

The son tossed the trout away from him onto the ice. The eagle swooped low, extended talons forward, and took the gift.   

 

Cronk's First Ice Since Boyhood

About a Couple of Good Ones and Other Ice Action

My 18-inch largemouth came from beyond the edge of three-foot weeds but relatively near the bank. Pretty close to where I had fished in 2021.

Lake Aeroflex felt like nemesis, but I got over the feeling straight away, because that's not how Oliver felt about ice fishing there. I tried ice fishing it in March 2021. A full four years ago, and I remember it so clearly it seems recent.

You might think that since I remember it so well...but that really has nothing to do with how good the fishing was. It has to do, in general, with the awe I felt for how pressured the fish had been. Untold dozens of ice fishermen on that ice over the course of a couple months. It had nothing to do with how good the fishing was, besides my witnessing a trout caught by another party. That surprised me. I got skunked. And that did leave a bad taste in my mouth. 

Oliver's caught pickerel through the ice here before, though.

Aeroflex didn't seem as busy yesterday as four years ago. I called my blog post on that outing "Aeroflex Pounded," as my impression was of very pressured fish. Naturally, I felt yesterday that setting up in the far back of the lake might have been better, but things got interesting, instead, when I wholeheartedly agreed with Oliver that walking in that far might belong to an all-day outing. (Hamburgers and hotdogs might, too.)  

We had set up and endured a long wait. Before we had our first fish--my 18-inch largemouth--the guy who either owns the red ice tent in the photo above, or who was the partner of the owner, hooked a salmon that hit a medium shiner four feet under a tip-up. Oliver watched the dramatic struggle and told me--I was using the nearby restroom--the salmon was a big one. Two minutes later, the guy's partner caught a small salmon by jigging. (Apparently a school had moved in.) 

Afterwards, Oliver cut a new hole with his old style spoon hand auger. The ice was a foot thick, and though he sharpens the blade after almost every outing, it takes him an effort. That thing works, though, and he cuts holes faster than my gas auger is cutting now. I very much appreciate his cutting holes as my beloved gas auger is not well. I did manage to cut four or five holes, but that used up a lot of fuel. There's not much left in the tank, and only two thirds of a quart in the bottle. It used to be that the auger cut right through without using much gas at all. I sharpened the blades to no end before yesterday's outing, so it might have to do with the blades' pitch. I have to look into that yet. Besides the blades, the engine doesn't run smoothly. And mostly it runs at a slower rpm than it used to. What holds me back from buying a lithium ion auger is price and the possibility that we won't have ice in the future. Or maybe only four inches of it. Which I can cut with my splitting bar. I'm going to look into drill options. A drill mounted on an auger. 

Oliver put one of his Jaw Jackers into the hole he cut, closest to the boat ramp. It piqued my interest. In other posts I've written about my intuition. After Oliver caught his 22-inch pickerel from that hole, I said, "I had a feeling about that hole!" Oliver and Brian Cronk laughed. I understand. And it can seem odd to have such fixations, but they really just make life more interesting. When you "know" something in advance, you don't really. Nothing confirms knowledge but physical evidence unless it's introspection, but the feeling about the Jaw Jacker's potential can't be knowledge until the fish is on. And then the former feeling is, at least somewhat, confirmed. I've never spent the time to try to figure out to what degree knowledge is attained. It's interesting to ask why you would get intuitions about the possibilities of certain fishing situations for "no reason." I, for one, don't believe they happen for no reason. By listing every incident and providing additional descriptions of environments, I think one should be able to prove such intuitions do not happen randomly. 

The deeper question is: How does the human mind sense a fish coming? I could write all night if my mood was dialed in, but it's pretty simple. It has to do with having enough experience. I had to know something about the water Oliver set that Jaw Jacker in. Oooh...an interesting spot. That's all it is. It's not like I used to fish there when the water was open, but I knew enough about the weeds and the water being a little deeper there. Not that I had thought about it myself and set one of my tip-ups there before Oliver got to it, but once he did, I was immediately able to appreciate it. 

And it paid off--   

Oliver's 22-incher wasn't our only pickerel action. I had set a tip up over weeds three feet down, and though the flag failed to spring, the pickerel--I believe it was--took some 20 yards or more of line and came off during the fight. We also had two small pickerel take fatheads three feet under tip-ups set out for salmon and cut the line.

2021

 

The Vehicle Can Determine the Outing

Tilcon  Lake

As you grow older, you become more selective about what you do with your time, not just because you have less of it left, but because over the course of events while using your time, you take moments out to reflect on the value. That's not to say that as a teenager, when I would fish a little creek for redfin pickerel if I had to, my choices--and I fished almost every day year round--did not comprise an authentic pursuit that had a lot on what I do now. It's just to say there's a world of difference between the two.

I was willing to get out and fish for river trout today, until I realized my parking spot would have a pile of ploughed snow on it, and the lot at the other spot, where I don't particularly want to fish, anyway, might not be ploughed out. I don't see why the town would make the effort. All of which got me thinking again of life without four-wheel drive. Lately I've been trying to keep my mind open to reasons why it's not such a good thing to own a Honda Civic, even though that's the vehicle I own, and that's not changing. Always one to save money, I save a lot of it. For one thing, if I were to buy an SUV, I'd only buy a good one with real four-wheel drive and good clearance. But to the purpose of the likes of parking today at the river? It's not like I have a boat on a trailer to pull and launch--living in a condo, there's nowhere to park that. Nor is it that I surf fish enough to justify the cost of a beach buggy.

No, and all told, I fish a lot. With quality equipment at quality places. The Civic serves it all well. I need a second man to load my squareback canoe on top, but not only is that relatively easy to do, the car sits low enough that I can load my 13-footer alone. 

But today, the obvious thing to do would have been to drive to Mount Hope Pond, where I'm certain the ice is good and safe, and enjoy an outing alone. Or with whomever else is up there. That's a bit of a bugbear, because I really do like being altogether alone. When I fished Tilcon Lake a while back, I was all alone, except for some guys way back near the other end. Even though I almost broke my arm when I fell, it hardly ruffled me, certainly no bad mark on a great time. I bought crampons the day after, though. I intend to use them and not end up in the hospital. Had my arm broken, I wouldn't have been able to get my gear back out. 

Instead of going to Mount Hope, I've a lot to do. I was going to fish trout for little more than an hour. River's not a long drive away. I look ahead long term, when I decide on what to do short term. The time I invest in getting stuff done today, means I'm that much ahead of the future. I quit my job soon, retire from the Foodworker's union. By what people tell me, they think I'll do nothing but fish. People don't understand there's a world of value in being a writer regardless of fishing, if you have goals you want to achieve as a writer. Fishing is re-creation, however. No other form of recreation I do--and I do outdoor photography, I hike, I like to swim--rejuvenates me as fishing does. No matter how electric the feeling I have for my writing goals, that connection tends to short circuit and the exercise become no better than being a coach potato. From that drawback, there are two kinds of diversions. One of them the job has served all these decades. Working a job makes me think of my writing as the alternative, and I get a lot of ideas that way. I carry a notebook in my back pocket, and another notebook in my car, for that reason. The other diversion is recreation. Mostly fishing, which inspires some ideas, but mostly cleans out my system and revitalizes me in a big way. 

After I quit my job, I'll have the second kind of diversion. For the first kind, I have Starbucks over in the shopping mall. Maybe I'll find other ways to be out in society, too. 

Edit on 3/23/2025: I've already found a nice alternative to Starbucks. The Goldfinch in Bernardsville. Really nice coffee spot.  

Tilcon

Never Underestimate the Ability to Remember an Outing

I felt surprised we found water about 25 feet deep. We had parked at the East Picnic Area and began walking towards the dike, the pond's 30 acres being a fairly large space. I guess Oliver started cutting holes halfway there. 

With deep water not all that far from the bank, I made sure we opened and otherwise cut holes just off that bank over about 10 feet of water. Any pickerel would surely hit there, possibly bass, too, but I wasn't sure the bottom was weedy. 

Years ago, I used to walk this far and further towards the back of the pond when fishing on lunch breaks while otherwise working for Affinity Federal Credit Union. I caught bass, and I observed the water. I don't recall any weeds...until I got closer to the back of the pond where it is very weedy, but very shallow.

As I headed for where we'd cut holes today, I asked someone with tip-ups set nearer the pond's back if he'd caught anything. "A pickerel," he said. 

So I set a line of five tip-ups along about a hundred yards of bank-front. We had arrived at about 1:30 and had to be out of the park by 4:00, so we'd be packing it in before 3:30. I didn't have much faith in our setup, but Oliver did. In the past, my ice fishing partner and I had always taken at least four hits while fishing this pond. Oliver had set his Jaw Jackers in water at least 25 feet deep, except for one of them set way out towards the swimming beach, where the depth had come back up to maybe 15 feet. 

I was glad some of our shiners and fatheads were set out there, because I want to know about any bass. In 2022, we set a Jaw Jacker over 25 feet of water near the dike, which got hit. I had the fish on for only a second or two, though, and couldn't rule out a catfish. 

When Oliver caught his largemouth--over 15 inches, maybe 16 inches--in 25 feet of water on a little fathead minnow, another piece of the puzzle fell into place. I've never caught, nor seen bass caught, that deep in 49 years of ice fishing. It makes sense they'd go that deep, because the water's a little warmer, but do they inhabit the pond's deepest water of 40 or 45 feet? I would like to set a device that deep sometime.

Once I got my crampons over my Irish Setter pac boots, I marveled at the stupidity of having ice fished for 49 years without a pair. The ice was slippery today, but it could have been a lot worse, and in the past I've been on ice I shouldn't have been on without crampons. Just last week, I almost broke an arm and almost destroyed my Nikon D7100 camera, which, having hung loosely from my neck, got slammed against ice. What explains that other than stupidity? 

When ice as seen in the two photos is slippery, imagine what it's like when like that after the temperature rises above 32. Truly treacherous. I've been on ice like that, and it's almost impossible to walk on without cleats or crampons. That is, when there's a very thin melt, not yet the kind of melt that makes the ice soft. It doesn't always happen. I remember, in 2019, Brian Cronk and I ventured out on five inches of ice with the temp below freezing, having no trouble walking on it. Black ice. Newly formed. No snow on top. The temperature rose quickly to about 50, and we never had any problem with slippery ice. As we walked out, the ice was soft on top. Maybe if the temp had risen only to 33 or 34, it would have been slippery. Not sure how it works out. 

Apparently, the temperature today never got above 29. Holes froze up pretty quickly.

I'm linking to my first ice outing on the pond, my son's, too. It seems impossible that was seven years ago. You probably hear all the time about how fast time goes by, but it really does pass quickly. I'll give you a little advice, if you're interested. Get out and fish. We both know life consists in more than just fishing, anyway, so I see no harm in persuading for just a little more of it, perhaps. I wouldn't worry about fish populations. Oliver and I talked about how infrequently we see guys in their 20's out there fishing. Give fishing another five generations and you might worry about fish populations even less. I, for one, love to spend hours absorbed in reading a book, instead of fishing. I'm no intellectual genius who can read a page per second, though I'm informed that what you see in Good Will Hunting is no lie. There are people who can do that. No, I will lay back with a book deeply absorbed in it for as long as three hours at a time. Everything else going on around me tuned out. That's a longer span of time than Oliver and I fished today, and it's deeply rewarding to do that. But it's rewarding to fish, too, and you can measure the fact against your ability to remember fishing outings. You probably remember many throughout your lifetime, while daily chores are forgotten as easily as the daily news.  

Crampons marked trails on the ice.

About Private Ice Fishing, Too

Nice Pickerel

 

 

What Britain Lacks is Public Fisheries

Oliver Round's pickerel.

In a text, I told Oliver the fish are out there. Yes, I was thinking of salmon, especially, but after Monday, which was a great time alone but without fish, I'm happy to see we broke the silence with a number of live flags sounding off on those springy metal strips. Not that we could hear them above the wind and the conversation. A second fish on for me took a shiner but dropped it. Probably a perch. Oliver lost a couple. Each of us caught a pickerel.

Hearing the Gallup pole results at present, after kind of meeting George Gallup when I was a boy. He was a parishioner at Trinity Church, Princeton, which I attended with my family, and he might have sung in the Adult Choir, which my father led as the churches' music director. As much as choral and organ music as an American cultural influence has declined, it's not dead. I think it will always echo Britain's lead, and I don't believe that a relative lack in American church attendance will end the institution here, partly because of that lead the British world takes. What Britain lacks is public fisheries.   

Out there on the ice I was more aware of I-80 traffic than usual. It's not visible during the summer. 

Less of the sense of being out there. But still...

I had had us walk all the way to the drop-off beyond the shallow flat. That reflected my sense of possibility. I had to pick Oliver up at his house, and on the way to the lake, I did agree with him that right beyond the kayak launch is good. I was actually thinking of closer to shore than where we caught up to him, but in any case, what grabbed hold of me is that we might catch some fish further on. 

One of Oliver's Jaw Jackers did get hit with the fathead suspended about 10 feet over bottom in 35 feet of water, so rather than having been a yellow perch, that fish might have been one of the coveted salmon. I had five tip-ups rigged for salmon set out over such depth, but I didn't do any jigging today, even though I had 1/32-ounce jigs to tip with fatheads. 

Instead, I looked at salmon over my shoulder, figuring that some other time I might focus harder on catching one. Or some. One of Oliver's Jaw Jackers rigged with a large shiner got hit, and he caught the pickerel of about 17 inches. That got me thinking, after something had hit only some 15 minutes before in the same hole, and I got my power auger and began cutting more holes, after suffering that (gas) auger's temperamentality. I knew I set the bait suspended over weeds about 12 feet down, which, I had the hunch, was going to produce. While I cut those holes I watched a flag go up near the roaring powerhead. Obviously, working on the ice hadn't spooked that fish. That flag resulted in a pickerel of about 15 inches for me. The final product of my operation was a short row of tip-ups baited with large shiners on a weedy drop-off but nearer the shallow flat than to the 35-foot deep flat bottom. After we saw the tip-up in the middle of that row displaying a high flag, Brian soon had the pickerel I measured at about 22 inches on the ice.

A friend of Brian's, Mike, had showed up before we started catching the pickerel. He hung out awhile, and his cocker spaniel never seemed averse to the granular wetness and patches of shallow ice water up on top of the ice. Temps might have hit 53 degrees. I say that because my car thermometer had registered 50, and it felt warmer out there after a couple of hours, not because of my heavy clothing. Wind probably gusted to 40 miles per hour, and we had to reset some wind flags but not too many. Ice was about 8 inches thick in most places, probably 10 inches where I set that short row of tip-ups. 

All equipment in Brian's Jet Sled for the haul home, the ice had already firmed up significantly, meaning the temperature was 32 or colder at our feet, though it was 41 driving east on I-80.

  

 

Brian Cronk's slightly less than 22-incher.

Nice Pickerel

 

As for Friedrich Nietzsche and Prime Meat

I suffered so much unconscious (and semi-conscious or I wouldn't know it) resistance to this outing, I was afraid something would go seriously wrong. I might have fractured my upper arm or elbow, but if so, it's a hairline break I'll just let heal. 

Last time I was hospitalized, it was a fiasco.

It was near the end after sunset when I had all but completely relaxed. Yes, enough to have lost just enough attention to slip. If the arm's broken, it might be why my camera isn't, as, without thinking, I went down in a way to lessen the impact. It hit hard. I had hung it loosely around my neck. Now I know better than ever why they say Nikon's D7100 is a beast. 

Victim of a high-speed motorcycle accident when I was 20, I decided to be less the victim by just letting my cracked rib heal. That time I had no doubt there was a break, but I can't remember exactly how I felt that break. 

I took two Tylenol for this one.

Now about the fishing. Skunked. Like on Cranberry with Oliver, not a hit. Oliver wasn't able to come today, and that got me bummin', because we had had such a great time on the pond recently, and naturally, I wanted another great time. I didn't realize I would go into nature alone and move from real unease into greatly confident self-renewal like I haven't felt in years. Go work at a supermarket if you want to be with people--like they'll tell you you need. That will rob you of self like nothing else will. 

I read Nietzsche on my breaks from cutting meat. 

In my car. 

Puts things in balance.

I'm given a black uniform, so the supermarket must be in on it.

Today at Dow's, Laurie got my shiners...and fatheads. It's the first time in 49 years of ice fishing that I've bought fatheads. I have bought them in the past from Dover Sports Shop (another one bites the dust), to use for stocked brown trout before dawn (and another one down, and another one down, and another one bites the dust, yeah!). 

Fatheads for salmon. The setup was right. But for only two tip-ups. I also jigged a small Kastmaster and set tip-ups with really big large shiners for pickerel. You never know, one of the many bass might hit, too, but nothing hit at all today.

I know fish have been caught, because I saw blood stains at two holes from as long ago as a week, can't tell for sure. 

Fish are out there. 

Another thing I'm pretty sure about. Fish get clued in to what's going on, in their own way. It's why I joked to Kevin Glenn that the flat at Lake Hopatcong State Park is a strip mine operation. Every year the pickerel and perch populations get rejuvenated but within days the action through the ice seems to freeze...not because all the fish get taken home. Only enough for need of good spawning get taken, but the fish that remain, they shun what gets set out for them. 

They laugh at little jiggy-wit-it, too.

As for Friedrich Nietzsche and prime meat, the man had a weak spot. 

He never understood women.  

 

State Park