Rev,

I waved at you this morning as you passed by me. I have never seen it on Sawyer but ran on top of a 3-4" thick sheet that ran all the way across the Chattahoochee River in Georgia one time doing over 60 in a friends Procraft.

As the boat lifted on to the ice my boater was saying holy you know what and trying to get off of the sheet of ice as we were doing 360's on it. We finally managed off the ice and ran towards the ramp and started fishing.

My partner was just starting to make another cast as he turned to me and said " Hey why is the bow so high and looked down at the floor and noticed there was 6" deep of water on the floor. He told me to look in the battery box so I opened it up and said the batteries were covered in water. He said we gotta go, so I got in the front and as soon as he floored it the boats bow was almost at a 90 degree angle. It was the scariest ride I have ever had in a bassboat as we did everything we could even standing on the bow and the driver standing forward to get the hull down.

I had to make a running jump from a bassboat doing around 20+ on to the dock to get the trailer.

When we loaded the boat onto the trailer water started spewing out of the hull. We looked down and there was 5 finger size holes in the hull.

We are darn lucky to still be alive after that episode. The air temps were in the 30's.

So my free piece of advice stay clear of sheets of ice unless you want a reconfigured hull.

Russ

There is still a small amount of ice on some other lakes in the area after the cold snap we just got out of.  There are some coves on Tapps that are still a bit icy and most of the lake was 3-4 inches thick!  I wouldn't be suprised if some small ponds are still thawing.  Saw this on another board recently http://www.gamefishin.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1244. ; Pictures of the Lake Tapps skating rink.

I have a question, my chemistry proffesor at the U said that Lake Washington used to freeze completely in the 1920's where I-520 is now.  He said that cars would just drive across during winter.  I suspected he was full of it, anyone know for sure??

Damn liberal UW professors, spewing their rhetoric.

Lake Union and Green Lake are documented as freezing over, but not Washington, as far as I can find.

(Careful when you search via Google or Yahoo, etc. because there are a couple of "Lake Washingtons" in the mid-West that freeze over).


Here's a picture of Lake union frozen over.
http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/seattle&CISOPTR...


Snow and Other Weathers -- Seattle and King County
http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=3681

Even Hood Canal:
http://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1402  

(One person on the page at this last link claims that the north end of Lake WA, near Kenmore, froze over. I can see that, as that northern tip narrows down and gets shallow, but I couldn't find anything definitive saying that any major part of Lake WA froze over.)

Here's a claim that Sammamish also froze over:  http://www.sammamishheritage.org/1950.html ; and another with a picture  http://www.lakesamm.com/history/bigfreeze.asp



Stu