I spent the weekend with some friends at the Veterans Rest Camp on Big Marine and had a great time despite slow fishing. If you or a buddy is a vet I'd recommend checking out the full season cabins they just built at the Rest Camp. They are prety dang nice and are a great place to spend a weekend with the family or a group of friends.
Like I said the fishing was a little slow but we still caught a few. We didn't hit it real hard as the main goal was to just enjoy the day. We started with tip ups set from 10 feet to about 18 feet and only have 2-3 flags go up with nothing landed.
We moved shallower and set a line of 10 tip ups from 6 feet to about 10 feet. The shallower depths were better and this is were we landed all the fish. We caught bass, pike and perch but nothing huge. We did scratch out enough for a mini fish fry Saturday night.
The key seemed to go small for all of the fish. Nothing was taken on anything larger than a crappie minnow.
As for ice Big Marine looks to be in pretty good shape. We had 10 inches of good solid ice. We had a wheeler with us and it made a few popping sounds but not bad.
All in all a good weekend and the weather was fantastic. Its nice to sit out on the ice for 8 hours and never feel cold.
Thanks for the update, nofish. Never fished there on ice, but have spent quite a bit of time there on soft water. I have a brother-in-law who has a fish house out there. He invites me all the time but I just never seem to make it.