Cold Lake May Long?

[dork]

Hey, I was wondering if anyone knew the ice conditions on Cold Lake, and if it was looking like it would be clear for May long. Looking to get into some shallow water lakers.

Any information is apreciated.

Thanks

[-JR-]

I just googled earth it . looks open on the English Bay side the rest is solid .
Not sure how often it is up dated.
Have to zoom in to get the ice coverage from this week
Zooming out gets you last years picture

[Willowtrail]

I got these sent to me Sunday May 7th
Provincial Boat Launch


Long Bay


Marina

[58thecat]

Bays are open but there is a lot of ice out there, launch the boat, don't pay attention to the wind, and now you are stranded, may long should be ice free...maybe...

[EZM]

I'm following you out there on May Long ..... you go first .... lol

[Lowrance Fishburn]

Anyone with an update on the ice situation? Another warm day today should help but the forecast is pretty terrible after that until about Thursday next week. gonna be close for May long. Any up to the minute updates?

[Willowtrail]

No pics but was told last night there is more and more water.

[58thecat]

Still got lots of ice on it but she is moving around and pilling up in shore as the winds blow so that's an indication of open water in areas.
Just checked today.

[TylerThomson]

Couple more days. Bring a buddy and an axe lol.

[dork]

Thanks for the replies. Does anyone have anymore updates?

[Willowtrail]

I got sent lots of pictures today. Ice is pushed to the west side of the lake. We're headed up tomorrow so we'll have to just take it easy Friday and relax in our campsite. Still a few more days but soon

[splake0]

There is still lots of ice. I was at the marina yesterday.

[Mr Rogi]

I took these on Thursday May 18 from the look out point over looking the marina.

I was there yesterday and the lake was covered in slush, but it melted away in 24 hours.

It looks pretty clear, but in the very far distance there seemed to be a small sliver of white, which could be ice towards the center of the lake.

But I would say that's it's looking pretty good for this weekend.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

[EZM]

We are going up tomorrow. Sounds like there are still some ice out there - so don't go blasting across the lake ...... much of the ice may just below the surface and hitting that at 40 mph will have the same effect as hitting rocks and you can be in danger real quick.

I've seen this before ....... the damage a relatively small piece of ice can do is unbelievable.

[Willowtrail]

Took these May 18th at 8:30pm from Provincial Park. There is still ice to the east. Looked like it started at about Garnett beach and went as far as I could see with binos.

[58thecat]

There is ice out there boys, like I said watch the wind if you venture out of the bay's and up a shoreline, wind can put the ice back into the area you launched but it all looks real fishy out there

[58thecat]

The ice is out there somewhere, never seen it though, people told us it was at the north end of the lake, back bays were open

image.jpg

Lots of gatorsno walleye...we were not fishing we were catching

[wildwoods]

Originally Posted by 58thecat

The ice is out there somewhere, never seen it though, people told us it was at the north end of the lake, back bays were open

Attachment 134228

Lots of gatorsno walleye...we were not fishing we were catching

Nice day!

No downriggers going?!

[58thecat]

Originally Posted by wildwoods

Nice day!

No downriggers going?!

Next outing will target lakers.
Back bays are way too much fun right now.

[EZM]

Just got back an hour ago from Cold lake.

Saturday ..... except for the bays and a skirt around the lake away from shore - the chunks of floating lake ice covered pretty much across the entire lake yesterday from just about 3 km north (and outside) French, Provincial and ( about 500m east) of English bay. The bays were open water.

The Middle of the lake was largely impassable unless you skirted the edges and tried picking your way between the broken ice chunks.

There was an ice mass, complete with snow on the main mass that was probably only a few km's narrower than the entire lake. ( a sheet of ice 10-12 km wide). I'm not sure how far to the north from that vantage point - it was hard to see in the distance, but pretty cool.

We decided to load the boat onto the trailer and drive around the lake to try to find a spot to launch and fish that end of the lake.

to our surprise, when we arrived up there we could see the ice mass a km or two from shore!! We assumed this was the same contiguous sheet. If that was the case .....I'd say maybe 50% of the lake, by surface area, was fish able. The rest was a mine field.

We stopped at English bay on the way back and saw a giant iceberg, size of a house maybe 500-600 meters away.

Here's pictures of Saturday ....

[EZM]

Sunday (today) most of the ice was long gone. Where was a massive ice sheet and mine field of ice chunks, was reduced just floating ice chunks, and no ice mass today. The ice chunks where spread over an area probably 5 km wide (East to West) but maybe only 1 km deep (North to South). This was confined to the area center of the lake which was likely all that was left of the huge white mass from yesterday.

Also was a gorgeous day - water this morning was like glass ...... burning across lake was sureal ..... enjoy

[EZM]

That's pretty much all that was left of the scattered ice chunk fields



burning across lake - water like glass - this is pretty much right in the middle of the lake right before we came up on the last little bit of ice

[welder]

How was the fishing in the bays?

[58thecat]

Originally Posted by welder

How was the fishing in the bays?

Awesome for us but we switched things up like a fat kid in a candy store