Mirror Lake on Ice 5-4-24

[joatmon]

Okay, you can blame today's snow on me. A couple of neighbors invited me to tag along with them and some others (5 of us total) on a late season ice fishing trip to Mirror Lake. I have long wanted to ice fish in May, so gladly went along.

We accessed from the Evanston/north side and were able to drive as far as the road up to Whitney Reservoir. That made about a 13 mile trip to Mirror Lake. We each had a snowmobile, making the trip a little more comfortable. We had a few bare patches of asphalt in the first half mile, then deep snow on the roads the rest of the way.

We had two augers (my StrikeMaster Lite-Flite with 12" extension and a K-drill with 12" extension, both on electric drills). On the first attempt, neither auger could penetrate the ice and snow on the lake. Ultimately we had to auger as deep as possible, cut out a bigger area/box at the top to allow the drills (and in my case, the flange) to get below the surface. My auger with extension was 3-4 inches longer than the K-drill and I was able to get through without fully submersing my drill. The guy with the K-drill rig did have to extend his drill into the water. Due to difficulty augering, only the guy with the K-drill used two holes - the rest of us fished from a single hole.

We were in about 39 feet of water but all the fish we caught were in the upper 8-10 feet. Everybody caught some fish, and most had double digit numbers with a high of 24 fish. We caught mostly rainbows, maybe 10 brook trout, and only 1 tiger trout.

We also saw an avalanche off the east side of Bald Mountain. It sounded like a jet passing overhead, then someone saw the snow cascading over bare rock cliffs and pointed it out. It was awesome to behold from a safe distance. And just beautiful all the way around the lake.

Not bad for a snowmobile trip and a few hours on the ice in May!