I noted with a little alarm that there was a persistent and growing pond of water beneath the wood stove - the frequent heat was having a predictable effect and melting that end of the tent slowly into the lake. Mopping it up didn't work. For more than a few minutes.

Add to this the fact that it was clearly getting warmer outside. The evening before had us in a steady rain which was pooling on the ice… and an early Spring continuing it's relentless advance. I walked over to the shelter and our fishing trench - I might have imagined this, but it looked like the previous 18" thickness was a lot closer to 12" thick now.

The flags flew strongly, the water got deeper on the lake (and around our stove) and we kept fishing. Greg and I are not big ice fishermen but he brought his cross country skis and discovered he could skate across lakes and really build up speed. I think he covered 19 miles one day out there! I puttered around and occasionally lifted the poles out of the paws of sleeping anglers or tugged on their line just to see them wake up with a start and a shout!

That ice was definitely looking thinner - what was that safety limit? Did having 8 billion gallons on water on top of the lake ice make a difference? How much did that weigh?

Another crack boomed and went right through our icehouse bisecting our trench. That woke the fishermen up!

Yep, Spring was coming early this year!

The evening before we'd dropped a couple of Ciscos onto the lake floor below our fishing trench - gone by morning. By golly we were chumming for Lake Trout - Lakers are certainly not above free meals off the bottom!

This actually seemed to have little effect on our catch, fishing was clearly slowing down.

That evening someone thought it would be a brilliant idea to walk the several miles back to the vehicles and go to a lodge to watch the March Madness games, eat pizza and drink beer.

Who was I to argue?

We left our basecamp and splashed across the lakes and portages like Jesus walking on water - jumped the open water now clearly visible at the shore (That wasn't there a couple of days ago….!) and found our vehicles. The lodge was happy to have paying customers after a long winter with little snow and less traffic and for our part we were happy to have beer and their frozen pizzas.

Leaving the Lodge in the moonlit dark was another matter.

The standing rainwater on top of the ice was now glazed over - every step involved icebreaking and splashing in the dark. The distant rumble of cracking lake ice was now seemingly all around us. Even with an uncounted number of beers consumed, there was a focus as we followed our earlier tracks through the darkness.

I - of course - slipped and fell, soaking myself to the bone in the icy surface water. Good thing we had all these medical resources - unfortunately I was trailing the group at this point so it was probably a moot point. But I'm sure they would have eventually missed me and probably tried to find me.

Right?

I was rather chilled when I stumbled into camp, noting with growing dismay that we appeared to now live in a life raft, not a Cabelas tent. Poker chips were again deployed and after removing everything wet I wiggled into my bunk and dozed off.