May 11th, 2011:  The snow drifts are shrinking every day and the ice is getting rotten!  We have some open water in the back bay where we should be able to land the float plane by tomorrow I think.  The float plane is expected to be here in a few days so it should work out right on schedule.  I don’t know what our other lakes look like right now but when the freight and fuel planes start coming in on Friday, I’ll get them to take a look for me.

The water levels are back to normal, you can see debris in the yard from the high water mark left last fall and it’s about 3 feet higher than where the ice starts, plus my floating docks in the back bay are up on dry land and I have to push them out with my Cat.

It’s raining and miserable here today but by Friday it’s going to get very nice again.  We had a couple of days where we were working in just t-shirts, but that won’t be the case again for a few days.  All this rain we’re getting is going to really beat up that ice, it’s getting very sketchy along the shore so we’re going to take the snowmobile off today and stay off the ice from now on.  No more ice fishing, darn!  It’s funny how the ice in the back bay is so different from the ice out in front of the lodge and on the main lake.