Ice, ice maybe: Mild winter upends ice fishing season at some area lakes

There is snow in the mountains, but a key component of winter is missing at Curlew Lake: ice.

Cameo Scuro, a partner and owner of Tiffany’s Resort on the south shore of the lake in Ferry County, said there’s some ice on the lake’s north and south ends, but the rest is all open water.

That’s bad news for ice fishermen, who flock to the lake once it freezes over to chase perch and trout. The resort caters to those anglers, offering seven cabins for rent in January and February.

The cabins are in high demand, often booked well in advance. This winter, though, Scuro is taking a different sort of call.

“We’ve just had several cancellations, which is a bummer,” Scuro said.

The cancellations have been brought on by the same trend that’s been upending winter recreation all over the West, with a true El Niño winter resulting in warm and dry conditions.

Ski resorts were forced to open late, and are still operating at partial capacity. Snow cover on cross-country ski trails has been skinny. Snowshoers are finding that their hikes don’t require snowshoes.

And ice anglers are finding their options limited, leaving some of them out in the warm.

Chris Donley, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s eastern region fish program manager, said several popular ice fishing lakes in the Spokane area that normally freeze by now that still have open water. For some of them, the typical freeze date comes in early December, meaning the relatively tropical end to 2023 has cost anglers a month of ice fishing.

“This is exceptionally late,” Donley said.

Ice fishing safely means the layer of ice on top of a lake needs to be thick – WDFW recommends staying off the ice until it’s at least 4 inches thick. Building that layer requires consecutive days of low temperatures in the teens or 20s, Donley said, and that hasn’t happened for much of the Inland region. The average high in December was above 38 degrees for Spokane and Colville, according to the National Weather Service.

Hard water fans do have a few options, all of them at higher elevations. Bonaparte Lake, in the mountains between Republic and Tonasket, has plenty of ice, according to Bonaparte Lake Resort’s Facebook page. Donley said a few lakes in Pend Oreille County are frozen, too, and that anglers there are finding decent numbers of perch.

Anglers who focus elsewhere are still waiting.

“There’s a number of really good ones and none of them have any ice on them,” Donley said on Wednesday.

Waitts Lake, outside of Valley, is one of those. The lake hasn’t seen any ice this winter.

Winona Beach Resort, which has two locations on the lake, began offering some winter rentals for the first time this year, hoping to catch the ski and ice fishing crowd. Paltry snowfall hasn’t helped the skiers, and ice fishing has been nonexistent. Brook Weisner, general manager of the resort, said it’s affecting their business.

The lake often freezes in mid-to-late December or early January, and the fishery is popular with anglers looking for big trout. The lake has good numbers of rainbows and browns, and the occasional tiger trout.

In good ice fishing years, he’s seen as many as 16 ice fishermen set up in an area known to produce lunkers. This year, he just sees open water.

The mild weather has made maintenance around the resort easier, and allowed the staff to complete work normally reserved for later in the year – deck repairs, tree trimming, dock repairs. But ice fishermen are still calling, wondering if they’ll ever be able to get on the lake.

“A lot of the locals are pretty disappointed they can’t get out here and ice fish,” Weisner said.

Back at Curlew, it’s the fourth winter that Tiffany’s Resort has offered cabin rentals through January and February for anglers visiting Curlew Lake. The lake is usually fully frozen by the first week of January, with ice that’s safe to walk on.

This winter has been a different story. Ice began to appear on the lake in the days before Christmas, a thin layer that seemed to grow each day, Scuro said. Then a change in the weather made it disappear.

“Within a few hours all of that ice was gone,” Scuro said.

There is hope in the forecast. The National Weather Service expects lows in the teens next week in Republic, with the coldest nights dropping into single digits. Scuro said that has some anglers keeping their mid-January reservations for now, thinking the ice may grow yet.

In the meantime, people are still fishing Curlew Lake, just not from a bucket next to a 10-inch hole.

“We do have a few boats out on the water, which is so funny this time of year,” Scuro said.