By Rick Lundstedt

Spring 2003

Winter is actually over ….and Spring is here …..a time to look to the future, especially for camp owners and outdoors people. As I write this in early May, everything is heading in the right direction. Water is warming, bugs are hatching (mixed blessing), fish are moving. Last weekend the water was between 50 and 55 degrees. We spotted a couple of fish but they still looked like they were in a Mrs. Paul’s commercial rather than actively feeding. This weekend should be better and by the time you read this, our lake should be "hot" ! While this year’s April 21 ice out was later than normal, the temperature of the subsequent days also factors greatly into the feeding and spawning schedules. A few dedicated folks have been keeping Ice-out dates dating back from 1924. Jack Quinn and Linda Laskey provided the raw data which I converted into a graph. It presents an interesting picture. First you’ll notice a significant and obvious warming trend in the past 80 years. The trend line shows a clear pattern of earlier ice-out dates as the years progress. There are many other "patterns" that can be garnered from the graph / data, but the next most interesting is the "lack of association" between years. An early ice-out one year does not necessarily relate to an early ice out the next year. In fact, early follows early and late follows late only about one-third of the time. If it were totally random, the link would occur approx one half the time. The conclusion drawn from this is that it is more likely that we will experience year to year swings with a general trend toward early. Let’s see what the next 80 years tells us !