Is the ice fishing season ending in Michiana?

LA PORTE, Ind. -- Every corner of Michiana got above 40 degrees yesterday with overall pleasant and sunny conditions, which could spell doom for a fairly strong ice fishing season.

“We’ve seen quite a bit of ice fishing going on, some very large pike being pulled out, some bass, so very robust, and that's great because there’s a lot of people that really like their ice fishing.”

Mark Schreiber of the La Porte Parks and Rec. Department says the ice fishing this year has been great, with the city hosting their annual Winterfest this past weekend. This is in stark contrast to what the ice fishing community has seen the past couple of years.

“We weren’t able to have the ice fishing over the past couple of winters, we had to make sure it was cancelled. Not enough good ice, or no ice at all, and we’ve found that in recent years, it's been kind of an up and down process of if we’re going to get the ice in the wintertime. But this year, ten inches of ice on the lake last weekend”

And those 10 inches of ice, likely not going anywhere anytime soon. Even though we are going to be seeing temperatures feel almost springlike, as long as overnight lows stay below freezing, the ice won’t melt fully. The biggest threat to the ice right now is the rain that we could see Friday morning.

“If you were to ask anybody who’s ice fishing, or if there’s any derbies that are going on in the area this weekend, [I’m] pretty sure they feel pretty secure that they’re going to go ahead and have those tournaments because it does take a while for that ice to deteriorate.”

As long as the overnight lows stay below freezing, we shouldn’t see too much of a change in thickness, but it's always a good idea to know what kind of thickness you can stand on. Now the big thing you're going to need is a boring tool that will help you measure the ice thickness. If the ice is less than three inches, you’re not going to want to risk it.