GLADSTONE, Mich. (WZMQ) – While conditions were not ideal for ice fishing this time last year, the co-owner of a Gladstone Bait & Tackle Shop says this season is a different story.
Paul “Blade” Bloedorn knows the ice of Little Bay de Noc well.
“We’re going to check a little bit of ice,” Bloedorn said as he prepared to cut into the ice Friday morning. “We’ve got a Jiffy Scout here that measures the ice once we go through.”
Bloedorn drilled through the ice and put the measurement tool into the hole.
“We are on six and three-quarters inches of ice right here,” he said.
Bloedorn says the ice is practically the best anglers could have, especially compared to conditions last year.
“We’d have three inches in one spot and six inches in another, primarily because we had ice that formed,” he recalled. “Then we got snow on top of it and it insulated those spots that kept snow.”
So far, this season’s ice is solid. According to Bloedorn, it’s some of the best the bay has seen in years.
“Even in a typical year, we wouldn’t encounter this good of black ice,” he said. “We usually have some shove ice where the wind pushes the ice and then it’s chop ice and that freezes. This is the type of ice that the Corps of Engineers does studies on, not ice that is slushy and then refrozen.”
He credits the consistently below-freezing temperatures with the strength of the ice.
“Wthe warmup we had, we thought it might deteriorate more than it is,” said Bloedorn. “We maybe lost an inch. We probably have a windchill today of about six, even though we’re about 17 – 18 degrees. If you sit and listen for a while, you’ll hear the pinging and the ponging. That’s literally the ice expanding and making more.”
Because he is on the bay so often, Bloedorn regularly reports weather and ice fishing conditions on the Blade’s Bait & Tackle website and Facebook page. He takes his amphibious Wilcraft onto the ice to let anglers know where and where not to go.
“It’s firsthand,” he said. “I don’t take any knowledge from anybody else but myself because one guy’s six is another guy’s nine when we’re talking about thickness of ice.”
Conditions for the rest of the season will depend on the weather. However, Bloedorn anticipates a lot of traffic on top of—and underneath—the ice this weekend.
“It’s kind of a different community out here,” he said. “You start to see people enjoying a winter camping experience and a place to get out there with the family, and it’s game on. This fishery has a lot of fish in it. It’s unbelievable how many fish are under this ice.”
Click here to see Bloedorn’s recent ice reports.
