Minnesota Waterfowl Hunting

Mississippi river below Pepin is in the late stages of being totally locked up with ice jams. I was afraid it would happen with no wind. There a paddlewheeler that just headed upstream and I see they just shut down the wheel and are sitting there. My guess would be a large piece of ice got jammed. I do see one other boat out, but even I'm not the dumb and know the floating ice can lock things up quickly. Hopefully with the warmer weather and a south wind later today things will open back up.

Sat thru Tues they are talking 30s for highs. Not sure if that will melt it enough though. Isn't Sun the last day for the south zone ducks?

Years ago I did enough damage to boats and motors from ice to last a life time. Seriously in todays $ it was over $10k worth of repairs. I guess that is what happens when you get older, the drive to over come any situation dminishes both from lower energy and hopefully a good dallop of learned from ones past mistakes. There is good and bad to it. The good is I am safer now, the bad is I do not go huntuing as much as I used to. And one other factor plays a big factor in me hunting less - my Gout, which is a form of arthritis. My fingers ache when colder than 40.

Good luck to those still hunting ducks. And do yourself a favor--keep your hands warm and dry so you do not end up like my fingers 30 years from now.

Good to see your name again Al.............

Drove from lake city to Winona today, isolated pockets of open water. Pray for some wind.

I think a lot of those Ice jams come from the Chippewa river. But a barge went down yesterday around noon.

There were a few barges running yesterday breaking things up

Sent from a phancy fone

The ice jams was caused by the Chippewa. The rest of the river to Winona has ice covering it. I don't mind breaking ice but don't like having to dodge the bigger chucks that clog the river from the chip, you never know when the wind will change and it will lock up the river.

Found some open water this afternoon while deer hunting scony side and found some open water. Sat there for couple of hours and saw 3 geese, 2 swans and 1 mallard. I think I'm putting stuff away tomorrow, it's been a great season.

I was just by pepin on weds lots of it lockd up but there were a 1000 mergs and sum goldies and sum mallards and seen 1 hen woodduck if I had open watrr gear that's we're I would have set up..

There's always 1000's of mergs at the bottom of the lake when it's iced up. Only problem is the damn eagle watchers that are on the overlook just above. They've always got their binocs and spotting scopes out. I'd be afraid some animal activist would have a fit.