The North River access point this morning :



Beautiful day today, still well over 2ft of snow on the road, but its going to go fast now. 

RobW wrote:

That looks like open water to me! :-)

Have you got a Yamaha motor in the Arctic Cat? 

The North River has a decent current, I bet its been open for most of the winter. Hard to say though.
Why do you ask about the motor in my snowmobile? It's completely stock, I just picked it up 2 weeks ago fresh out of the crate. I think today is going to be it for the season for me though, I just wanted to get the motor broken in before summarizing. 

RobW wrote:

ATVenture wrote:

Why do you ask about the motor in my snowmobile? It's completely stock, I just picked it up 2 weeks ago fresh out of the crate. I think today is going to be it for the season for me though, I just wanted to get the motor broken in before summarizing. 

Ok, I'm really getting off topic for the ice out thread, so my apologies, I'll blame it on the snow on the ground here in Waterloo forcing my head back into winter mode. I'm also starting to wonder if this might finally be the year we get to go ice fishing for the trout opener. 

<if you aren't interested in snowmobiles, just skip the rest of this post>

Thanks to my 16 year old I've learned a lot about snowmobiles over the last couple years, including that Arctic Cat had a pretty bad run and had switched to using 3rd party engines including, but not exclusively Yamaha 4-strokes. I could see that it was definitely a newer sled so quite possibly had a Yamaha engine in it but I hadn't spent enough time on Arctic Cats to immediately recognize that it was a brand new sled or the model.

I'd been considering a 4-stroke Skidoo myself but still shopping used and the way the winter was going I ended up going fairly cheap with an '05 550F. That's still the newest sled in the family by 15 years with the others all being Yamaha's going back to a couple of '76 Prestige's that Pete (the 16 year old) has. I looked at a few newer Yamaha's but Pete kept vetoing them on looks. The Arctic Cats have better styling than the current Yamaha's so a recent model Arctic Cat with a Yamaha 4-stroke could be interesting next winter. 
 

Hey Rob, I'm not overly familiar with the 4 strokes as I'm a 2-stroke guy myself. I'd rather sacrifice the extra reliability for the weight savings and extra performance of a 2-stroke. Arctic Cat used to use Suzuki motors I believe, but recently developed their own 2-stroke motors which they call the "CTec II". They are supposedly the most reliable and efficient 2-stroke motor in the industry, the 600cc model was released in 14' or 15' and the 800cc was released in 17'. No one really knows much about them yet because they have been so bulletproof none have really blown up yet. The 600cc has 135hp and the 800cc has 165hp I believe.

Last edited by ATVenture (4/21/2018 8:29 am)

Nice. This aligns with my previous experience, which incidentally was a first attempt at the trip I have booked for May 4. I'm really hoping not to have another cancellation this year, but I feel like booking the same trip may have jinxed it!

MODIS shows Simcoe to be about 1/2 open, and a noticeable amount of thawing compared to Friday. We should get lots of clear images this week. Comparing yesterday's image to previous years... it's hard to be optimistic for May 4 still...

Fished a small lake just outside the park near the west gate on Saturday and found about 20" of ice.  By the end of the day it was starting to get a bit mushy on top but there is still a long way to go.  Back home Sunday for a round of golf and a sunburn.  
 

April 23rd

[img]https://gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov/image-download?TIME=2018-04-23T00:00:00Z&extent=-80.73152160644531,43.37759399414063,-75.83738708496094,46.85723876953126&epsg=4326&layers=MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Coastlines&opacities=1,1&worldfile=false&format=image/jpeg&width=2228&height=1584[/img]

Last edited by Methye (4/24/2018 6:40 pm)

Forecast remaining for this week and especially early next week are quite favorable for a rapid break up and ice out, things are gunna get interesting shortly!

Well yesterday I was at Kiosk. I did my lunch and a fire outing with my dog. The natives were still snowmobiling across the lake and I walked out about 100 feet. There are a few very small sections where the ice is melting at shore, but for the most part its tight, tight, tight. I was going to bring my auger but I forgot.
Last year when the ice melt was at around the same stage we were ~2.5 weeks(ish) from ice-out.
Once the ice is melted a few feet out around the entire circumference of the lake we are looking at another week.
Also note Kiosk is a lower elevation than most of 60 and usually melts sooner. It was 20 degrees out there yesterday.
I am sure when trout opens on the 28th I will 100% be able to ice fish Kiosk Lake. It might be interesting getting from land onto ice, but the ice will still be WELL over 18 inches thick.

Last edited by ATVenture (4/25/2018 8:32 am)