Gray instead of white.
I rode up to Mount Hope Pond with a bucket of shiners and fatheads, hoping for nice trout, pickerel, and bass. With 280 trout stocked into 18 surface acres of water, it's a possibility. Of course I knew I might find the ice unsafe, but I really expected it wouldn't be just yet. Again, I pulled into the large parking lot as I did once earlier in the ice season, and within seconds the pond came into view. It didn't look good. That gray off-color, rather than white, signaled to me that I probably wasn't staying here long. I quickly decided to first approach the pond with just my splitting bar. That no one else fished it, and Fridays might draw more anglers than other weekdays do, was also a definite sign that things weren't good.
Of course, I had to check it out. And I stepped out on the ice a couple of feet from the beach, my feet getting moist because my waterproof boots aren't living up to that description, and I need to try to repair or replace them. Then I reached forward and whacked my way through the ice with two thrusts of my splitting bar. I did this repeatedly out of curiosity, but there was no hope. Three inches on top was slush, and maybe three or four inches underneath rotted out.
I'm getting older and forgetful, it's true. How many times I've walked a plank to get onto a lake over the melt at the edge late in the ice season, I don't recall, but if I had had a plank, I might have walked it, and then tested the ice, say, eight feet from the edge of the beach. Then, I might have found hope existed yet.
It's interesting to me how, quite apparently, the ice melts from underneath. I noticed what clearly seemed to be the phenomenon at Lake Aeroflex two days ago, when, by all we could judge, the ice had melted about four inches from underneath, having been a foot thick Thursday the week before. I only hedge from certain judgment because I want some peer review to back up what I've seen. Here, too. With three inches of slush and four inches of striated rot underneath, that's a total of seven inches. Oliver Round was up here a week ago when it was 15 inches thick.
That rot is a curiosity. I always refer to the striations, but most people speak of honeycombing. I recall once being out on Lake Hopatcong with my son when things began to get sketchy. This was almost two decades ago. The surface was soft, there was about four inches of striated ice, and three or four inches of hard ice underneath that rot, so I considered the ice safe and we fished. But if it melts from underneath, as it clearly seems to, why wasn't it striated all the way through? And besides, how do warmer temps permeate cold, hard ice to rot it down towards that surface underneath?
I've paid attention to many ice conditions over the decades, but I've never noticed until two days ago that ice seems to thin out from underneath. I've seen plenty of that striated rot--which proves much of the whole mass is affected by the melt--but I've never had the opportunity to measure such differences as a foot and eight inches, 15 inches and about seven inches, as these recent outings have afforded me.
My splitting bar head was welded onto the iron shaft, a cut having accommodated that chisel head.
When the air is below freezing, cold sinks to ground level and ice freezes from the top down. Air above freezing, the reverse happens, and the warmish water in contact with the ice melts it, like an ice cube. The surface melts to, but at a far slower rate, hence the slush. What did you do with the bait???
ReplyDeleteJust in case Blogger didn't notify you of my comment (below).
DeleteThanks a lot for answering my question, but I'm still not exactly clear on the reverse happening, as warm air rises.... About the bait, I was going to release it all in the pond about a hundred yards from my front door at home, and I should have, there was water open at the edge, but then I got the idea of fishing the canal for pickerel when rain (was supposed to) would come & shut me out of the river trout. So all the bait died! I have a plug-in bubbler, but you know how that goes in spite of one.
ReplyDeleteEven though warm air rises, it is warm on the ice, of course, the air mass is warm to the ground...but I still don't see how it gets through solid ice and warms that ice mass from underneath. I've noticed striated ice for decades--that the whole mass of the ice "rots," but how the warm air affects ice all the way through, I still don't see, though it does somehow.
ReplyDelete"Air above freezing, the reverse happens" should read Air "goes" above freezing. So, cold on the ground fortified by sub-freezing temps permeates the ice overcoming the warmer water below and freezes ever deeper, same happens on dirt. But once the temp is above freezing, the warmer water below can reclaim itself from the bottom up. Some melting will occur at the surface hence the slush, but the majority is done from underneath. Eventually on the melt the two warmer forces meet causing the rot. Minnows: Try heavily Kosher salting the minnows and freezing them. Use them on a jig head for trout.
ReplyDeleteStill don't understand. You know that once water hits 39.2 degrees, it sinks, rather than rises. So it's a long way before water gets above 39.2 & stays at the surface. A pond can be without ice & sometimes is, in fact, with warmest water at bottom. I still don't understand how temps warmer than just a little above freezing get underneath the ice.
DeleteWeird right!!! Perhaps my understanding is wrong. But I look at it kind of like gravity, the cold above conducts through the ice overcoming the water below (rate depending on the the actual air temps below freezing, and current thickness of existing ice). Once the air temps go above freezing forces reverse, ice melts from the bottom up.
ReplyDeleteI understand cold conducting through the ice and growing at the bottom. That's easy. What I don't get is how warm temperatures pass through cold ice and melt it from the bottom up. I know warm temps permeate ice, because it "rots." Takes on that weakened "honeycomb" state, but I don't understand the dynamics.
DeleteThe key is that once air temp is above freezing, the permeation significantly reduces now producing the slush. Water contact below wins out and begins to melt the ice, like an ice cube in a glass of water.
ReplyDeleteAha! I get it now. I just couldn't picture it myself with you trying to guide me. But now that you explain the actual thing there in the ice & just underneath, it makes perfect sense now.
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