Technically, this is SPRING.

While our snowmobiling guests are understandably elated by the lengthy winter and incredible snow conditions that we’ve been having, us fishermen (and women) are less than enthusiastic about this turn of events.

Do we face a season without open water, like the picture above? Not likely, but it does seem that spring will be late in making it’s arrival to the north country this year. Expect a late “ice out” for all of the lakes in Pittsburg this year, but what does that really mean?  Over the last ten years, we’ve had ice out as early as the second week in April to as late as May 3, but we expect a later ice out this year, possibly as much as a week later. Ice depths on Back Lake are probably in the 24″ – 30″ range, and our weather is supposed to remain unseasonably cold this coming week.

Once Back Lake’s ice disappears, the ice on Lake Francis and First Connecticut Lake usually goes off within a week or so, with Second Connecticut Lake and Third Connecticut Lake going off distantly after that.

An even better question is how this weather, and the corresponding snow melt (if that ever happens), affects the salmon run in the stretches of the Connecticut River in May. No matter what type of winter we have, it always seems as though we’re fishing for those silver torpedoes around the Mother’s Day weekend. I don’t expect that to change much this year, but we will have a more difficult time getting to the river because of the snow (yes, there probably will be some), and the massive amount of snow could mean some higher than normal river flows as well. Of course, this amount of snow may also mean a longer run for the smelt and salmon, as there will be more runoff in the river.

All we can do is wait and see, and hope that we have a nice slow transition in to that season that we call “spring”.