Its that time of year, the time when the ice starts to cover the lakes and people want to get out and go ice fishing. Andrew Carlson, Iowa DNR Fisheries Management Biologist talks about the current conditions of the ice.
“We had between five and a half and eight inches on Spirit Lake, roughly the same between six and seven on Center Lake and East Okoboji. A West Okoboji right now is still open in some areas, so that’s not a lake we would recommend that people go out on. There’s minimal ice on some of the the northern reaches of the lake, but nothing that could be safe to walk on. But the other lakes around here, Spirit and East Okoboji Center. We’re already seeing some ice anglers out there pursuing their craft, so it is a pretty, pretty safe walking level of ice right now to be out there just walking. We wouldn’t recommend any vehicles of any kind yet, though, because we’re only at about six to eight inches.”
Carlson talks about the threshold of thickness for different vehicles to be on the ice.
“I like to recommend more like ten, just to be really safe with it. And then small cars, usually about twelve, and larger vehicles like trucks, pickup trucks. Usually you want at least fifteen inches.”
Carlson says they encourage everyone to go the extra mile when it comes to safety.
“We just encourage everyone to be safe out there and to travel in groups. Walk in a single file line if you can. Invest in some ice, pick if you can. That’s really good to have a, you know, a safety mechanism in place. But right now it’s it’s a good time to be walking on most of the lakes around here and doing some fishing.”
Remember no ice is 100 percent safe and never go out on the ice alone. For more tips on how to stay safe on the ice you can visit the Iowa DNR website at iowadnr.gov
