SUNDOG

Do you know what a SUNDOG is?? It is one of God's most beautiful creations and wonders. When my nephew Mark invited me to Minnesota in February, 2010 to go ice fishing, we picked a day which happened to be one of the coldest days of the month. It's a full day's drive to Mille Lac Lake, MN so I left Butte at sun rise. The temperature was twenty degrees below zero. When I reached the highway just out of town I saw it!! The sun was just breaking the horizon, and the sky was clear as a bell. Did I have my camera with me? Yes! Pull over and take a picture before it is gone! Could it have been a better composition? Not with that windmill right in front of the rising sun!

A Sundog is made with prism shaped ice crystals, otherwise known as "diamond dust" that are floating in the atmosphere. That alone is enough to describe the phenomenon that the viewer is about to see. It must be extremely cold for a Sundog to form so the minus 20 degree temperature of this day, along with the clear sky, was a perfect combination as the sunrise happened. The prism shaped ice crystals reflect the sun's rays and create the beauty that we see below. I have seen several Sundogs since living here but this one was truly the clearest and most profound one yet. This is another advantage of living in a very cold climate. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and I wish that everyone could experience one first hand. Thank you, God, for your wonderful creation.

Minnesota Ice Fishing, Feb. 2010

Minnesota had at least as much snow as we did here in North Dakota but they seem to keep their lakes more accessible. They do have more lakes (10,000 at last count) and more people to use them so most lakes have roads plowed on them so one can get around. Mille Lacs, near Brainerd, MN is one of those that plows roads on the lake. Mille Lacs is Minnesota's second largest lake at just over 200 square miles of surface area and averages 40 feet in depth. My nephew, Mark, invited me to come to MN for an ice fishing adventure since I was not able to do much fishing here. It was a great experience and an opportunity to see what ice fishing in Minnesota was all about.

Since there are more people using the lakes in MN, you see more of a community of fishing shanties on the lakes. This trip was in February of 2010 and normally you would see a larger Shanty Town than this but with the severe winter, fewer people ventured out.
Once we got my fish house set up, it was off to drilling holes and getting the rigs ready to fish. The walleye bite was a little off when we were there but we did have good success with perch. What could be better than fishing with all the comforts of home?

One day it was so nice that Mark drilled a hole outside and soaked up the warmth of the sun's rays. I think the air temperature was -10 at the time.

Sunset on the snow drifts of Mille Lacs lake. It was a great week of fishing.

Ice Fishing '09-'10

The past three winters ('08-'09, '09-'10, and '10-'11) have seen snowfall of epic proportions. So much, in fact, that it has been nearly impossible to get onto the lakes because of snow drifts at the access points as well as the amount of snow on top of the lakes makes driving impossible. Each year I have been able to go out early in the season (as soon as the ice is thick enough) and start what I think and hope will be a full season of ice fishing. This picture is my first or second trip to Cottonwood Lake in December, 2009. The ice was close to three feet thick already and the conditions for getting around on it were excellent. I thought that I was in for a great ice fishing season!

The fishing is always good on Cottonwood and I usually catch my limit of Northerns right away. The Game and Fish Department has been working at building up the perch and walleye population as well. Even though it is more fun to reel in a huge 32 inch long northern, the perch are worth it too, especially when they hit the frying pan.

On this particular fishing trip my intention was to spend at least several days, if not a week, in my fish house and take advantage of the quiet and solitude of being out on the ice and having the lake all to myself. I spent one night out there and the next day the weather report started talking about a blizzard coming in. The afternoon of the second day it hit. It certainly was a good thing that I decided to come back home because if I had stayed out there, I would never have been able to get off the lake. Snow drifts started swirling around my rig so I packed up and headed home. That was the last of the fishing for the whole winter since the snow kept coming and kept coming. I parked my Jeep on the driveway when I got home that evening and the next day the snow had drifted around it. The reports had more snow coming over the course of the next several days and weeks, so I finally got it parked inside the garage. I couldn't go any place anyway.