Finally! Lake Minnetonka Ice in Full Retreat, Official 'Ice Out' Expected Next Week

Hastened by highs expected to hover around 70 degrees this weekend, the ice on Lake Minnetonka is finally making a steady retreat. Popular restaurants like Maynard's are opening their wharfs and patios for guests anxious to get outside, and charter boats from Al & Alma's, Paradise Cruises and others are in the water preparing for the upcoming season.

While open water is becoming common in and around most bays, enough ice still remains around some parts of Lake Minnetonka for ice fishermen to brave a late spring trek to their favorite hole. 

“I’m planning to ice fish on Carson’s Bay this afternoon,” Doug McDougal said via Lake Minnetonka Patch’s Facebook page. “There’s still plenty of ice in the middle.”

Kristine Houtman said this week that ice on Jennings and West Arm Bay was still dominating but predicted the ice would be out on smaller bays like hers by Monday.

“Tim at Wayzata Bait predicts May 1, and I think he’s probably right,” she said.

Similar reports came in from St. Albans Bay, where Amy VanEgtern Wilkinson said the ice was still covering most of the water surface as of Wednesday afternoon.

“There is open water over the sand bar and a few feet around the shoreline and by the docks,” she said.

Chase Korth and his buddies are sick of the ice and are planning to take matters into their own hands this weekend to hasten the melt

“A couple buddies are taking out the jet skis to break up some ice and hopefully speed things up a bit on Sunday—assuming there’s still ice, that is,” he said.

Rich Diaz said late Wednesday that Robinson’s Bay is still totally frozen, with just a tiny bit of open water in certain spots along the shore—which had been re-freezing at night earlier this week.

“All of Lower Lake North appears to be frozen as well, except for some open water along a former pressure ridge running from Spirit Island to Gibson’s Point,” Diaz said this week.

The Freshwater Society has been the official caller of Lake Minnetonka ice out for more than 50 years. Ice out on Lake Minnetonka is a sign of spring that scientists and lakeshore residents have been tracking and recording since at least 1855. Freshwater Society founder Dick Gray, who catalogued the early records and has made his own records since 1968, described the standard for determining ice-out in a 2003 column: “when it is possible to travel by small boat from any one shore to any other shore through any passage on the lake.”

Prior to that, Gray wrote, ice-out sometimes was determined by when a car placed on the ice fell through or when a boat could travel from Excelsior to Wayzata.