Patience is a Virtue!!

Himilayan salt lamp

Well our latest El Nino is doing exactly what it was predicted to do, give the upper midwest a mild winter.  They weren't kidding, with daily high temperatures for Red Lake predicted in the 30's and lows in the upper teens, that's hardly enough to make ice very fast.  It's suppose to cool down next week so it may be possible to bring my house up next Friday and walk from shore, we'll see.  My friend Mark Applen is bringing his house up to JR's this friday and it will be good to get a report from him.  So as time ticks away I have a couple of things that I have been doing, one is improving the little things in the Salem Ice Cabin, like taking off the pads off the axle jacks and having them redone, sand blasted and re-powder coated as they were pretty rustyfrom the road salt.  I added mudflaps to my fenders this year to help reduce the salt that flies up off the road.  Will this help the fish bite better? no, but stuff like that drives me crazy.  Another thing I bought for the Ice Cabin is a himalayan salt lamp  if you click on the link it will tell you all the benefits that these lamps are suppose to do.  hopefully it will help our fishing somewhat and if nothing else it's a good s conversation piece.   it's interesting I got it from Amazon and I thought I would buy one for my friend Mark Applen who has the same Salem Ice Cabin that I have. Can you imagine if and when we have our houses close together, you'll never stop us from hauling in the walleyes!!! next thing you know I'll be giving yoga lessons on the ice........NOT!!!

HDS 9 and 12 on my dash

So my other project is to add a third depth finder to my new boat.  My previous boat had a Lowrance HDS 7 Gen 2 touch on the front deck mounted with a RAM mount so I could easily move it from my Ranger to my Jon Boat for fishing the river.  This year I sold the HDS 7 to Bruce and my front depthfinder on my new Ranger is built in and not easily removeable.  Therefore after selling it to Bruce I didn't have anything for the river.  Last month I upgraded with my friend Bill and got a newer HDS 12 Gen 3 which is for the back, and a HDS 9 Gen 3 which I already thought about running a second one on the console, one that can be removed and moved over to the jon boat.  I got a Johnny Ray mount which works great, is low profile and it is easily transferred with a simple push of a button.  After talking to the Lowrance guy at Cabela's on Black Friday he help me with the possible configurations and iit was as I planned, the HDS 9 will used primarily for GPS and charting including the interface with my Mototguide trolling motor and the HDS 12 will be used to run both standard sonar plus downscan/sidescan.  We talked a lot about searching for fish and I am going to spend alot of time this year learning this skill!  The big plus is I'll have my unit back for my Jon Boat.  My single biggest fear is that Bruce who is now really used to using my old HDS 7 will now what to upgrade to the 9!!  Oh well, the nice thing is that all of these units are networked together and work in unison to really give almost too much options for me to learn, yet when I do, watch out the BS will be simply a flowing!  I am very lucky to understand all of the connection requirements, how to hook up the NEMA 200 networks and how to connect the ethernet cables between the units.  It can been fairly complicated for sure.

This picture says it all

Maybe this week I can head up to the Alexandria area and find a lake I can walk out to get crappies.
Something to scratch this itch that has been bugging me since Thanksgiving.  First ice is always good for big crappies and sunfish and maybe I can fnd some!  my friend Keith sent me a picture of the state of ice fishing in Minnesota about now.  Those who ice fish will understand!  If you don't that's OK.