One of my followers sent me a photo of people ice fishing on Roses Lake, near Lake Chelan. This lake doesn’t get thick enough ice for safe fishing most years, so I ran up there to check it out. I was pleased to see that the road into the lake had been plowed as was the parking lot. There were a couple of anglers that had just started fishing and two groups of other anglers loading their sleds to head out on the ice. I took my auger along and drilled a hole to measure the thickness of the ice. I was surprised to find it eight inches thick. Roses would be a great destination for anglers in the winter. It receives a very generous plant of catchable size rainbow in the fall. It also has good populations of perch, bluegill, and crappie. The ice is safe now, but there is some warm weather forecast for the coming week, so I don’t know how long it will last. I stopped by the Mill Bay launch and found that just two boats had launched. They must have run up lake to look for kokanee as they were no where in site in the lower basin.
There were several anglers ice fishing at Roses Lake when I stopped by there on Thursday.