Cooks Bay is snow covered up to 8 inches of snow in most places, a few drifts here and there that are deep at around 12 inches. The top is fairly firm in most locations but be aware that there are some slushy areas. We are on almost 16 inches of ice in cooks bay. Slush is created by cracks in the ice and the weight of the snow pushing down on the ice, makes the water come up through the cracks. This is what happens when you are making ice with a heavy snow top. If you are coming by sled or ATV, you should not have any problems if you hit a wet area, but if you are towing anything heavier make sure you pack a shovel or have a buddy to push you. I have never seen this before, but now we have a pressure crack in cooks bay a little further up the bay that runs north and south that has made a very wide slushy area around 100 feet wide. When these areas are not disturbed they stay wet, even in these cold temperatures, but don’t worry you are not going through. Either back up or go around them, when you get sled or ATV traffic through them it disturbs the top and they freeze back up rough. For the areas that are not disturbed that is when you get surprised and get a slush patch. It is mainly due to the weight of the snow on the top making the water come up. The crack is not open, just hairline fractures in the ice that allow the water to infiltrate the snow. We had one of those cracks on the west side of our camp and moved our whole camp away from one of those slushy areas today into 18 feet of water.

Fishing on cooks bay: We have lots of fish in our new location. Pretty well non stop bite, five to ten minute lulls between catches. The camera shows schools of 50 to 100 perch in a school. The huts are located now on a sandy bottom, with sporadic short weed growth. Perch are feeding ravenously on the fresh water shrimp, and undersand vertebrae. Yesterday for instance it took about a half an hour to warm the holes up, ie jigging. The fish came around, yellow and charteuse rapala banged on the bottom stirred up the sand a bit and then held four inches off the bottom produced very well. That was about 8:30 am Then, the bite went a little light. Instead of using whole minnows, the guys put a small power bait on their jigs, or a half a minnow and the fish were hitting again. One guy even said by opening the hut door and letting more light in – because we are snow covered – the fish came around and started hitting again. What we are trying to say is, if you have fish under you and they are not hitting, you have to change your technique. Either use smaller baits, or give it a different presentation and it should work for you. To increase your productivity, change up your lures occasionally, obviously if there are no fish under you, you will not catch. If the fish are there and not biting, change it up. The area we fish has a multitude of fish there, it is up to the individual to understand how to catch them. We go to great lengths to put our huts on fish.

We are maxed out this weekend, and looking forward to having our guests go home
with fish!
Whitey

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