Ice Fishing

[SuberAvid 617]

I like ice fishing but I like flying better.  But it is fun to watch others for a little while and then go out and explore a bit; see what others are doing, look for animals, etc.. Thats my favorite style of ice fishing. 

 

I got out this weekend to play on another beautiful winter flying day.  Stopped by to see how my son-in-law was doing on Big Lake, some fresh snow there.  Then flew out to Figure 8 Lake to watch some guys fishing pike.  They were doing good and had about 15 or so.  Nothing but glare ice out there.  Decided to go look for wolves and flew out to the Theodore River, up it and then followed the Talachalitna River down to the Skwentna River, about a foot of new snow out there.  Good for airial tracking but other than tracks, only saw moose.  Always a blast though.

 

Coming back to the Matsu Valley, Pioneer Peak and the Knik glacier are always impressive.

[Av8r3400 1179]

How's the tail ski holding up?

[akflyer 1427]

Looks like a nice day!  I hope to get in a bit more ski flying this weekend! 

 

As far as the tail ski.. the adjustment mechanism he put on to set the stop angle sucks and Randy and I have both bent the ski right there.  Mine is cracked half way through the tube.  When I take it off soon I will redesign it so it will hold up a bit better.  I would guess it works fine for the guy that keep the plane in the hangar and only flys on nice days in good snow, but it does not hold up well to landing in the rough snow with hidden snogo tracks or hard wind blown surfaces.  It is however, must much better than not having one at all!  Just needs a little fine tuning and it will be a good unit I think.

 

[SuberAvid 617]

My tail ski has had a pretty rough life.   It has hit some really hard ice and frozen snow drifts; I even caught the plowed snowberm on the taxiway with it once when I was coming in to land; just a little too close coming over it.  It bent at the stop bolt early on like Leni said but I decided not to straighten it since I figured it would probably crack and it works fine with the bend in the arm and hasn't bent any further.  I had to reweld the saddle piece that rests againse the TW arm because it didn't get good weld penetraqtion there but that was no big deal and I noticed it before I lost anything.  I really like it for the performance and it keeps from burying your tail up to the HS in soft snow.  Well worth it in my opinion.

[Av8r3400 1179]

Post some photos of your mods when you can...

[thebriman 69]

Great pictures Randy!  Honestly I'm a little bit jealous.  Out here in Georgia we have trees and chicken houses.

[1avidflyer 1983]

The topic was ice fishing, and so I'll wonder a bit from where it's at now back to the original title.  My son sent me this picture of one of the carpenter's that work for him who has been fishing a lot up on Lake of the Woods in northern Mn/ Canada.  4' of auger wasn't enough to get through the ice.  Each extention on the auger is 2' long.  I'm about 100 miles south of Lake of the Woods, and we had 6" of fresh snow yesterday and -4 F this morning.  Supposed to be about -10 F tonight.  At that rate, they will be ice fishing for a good while yet.  I'm getting out of here and heading to SC for a couple of weeks tomorrow.  Hope the furnace keeps running so the place doesn't freeze up....  Jim Chuk

[akflyer 1427]

Randy,

 

Headed up to the lodge.  Talked to Juli yesterday and she said that there is a group up there now doing lots of fishing.  They puled some monsters out yesterday and lost one that was too big to get through a 10" hole in the ice.  We will probly just stay one maybe two nights.  heinz in here from Swizerland and want to meet the baby so I gotta bring her up there

 

We have daylight til after 9 pm now so grab some air and go for a flight!

 

Its a beautiful blue bird day, 20 degrees and no wind.. what more could a guy ask for

 

[akflyer 1427]

Jim, looks like some of our ice right now.  I thought as warm as it has been the ice would be geting thin already.... but its almost 48" thick here.  I guess its the first year I can remember that we have had less than 12" of snow on the lakes so they froze DEEP!

 

[akflyer 1427]

How's the tail ski holding up?

 

here is how mine is holding up.. good thing I put some extra rivets in the UHMW bottoms

 

[lostman 198]

Looks like you've hit a couple things! Glad it's still holding up at least until you pull it off for summer (or in your case, not snow) flying.