For the 2nd year in a row, I coerced my family to participate in a Parks & Recreation ice fishing event on MLK Day. It coincides with the Minnesota DNR’s annual free family ice fishing weekend. The Fridley Parks & Recreation event was hosted by Fishing for All. For $5 I don’t think you can beat it.
While I do enjoy fishing, ice fishing has never been my jam. But this was so fun and easy that it even made me think twice about getting some ice fishing gear…
Since the free fishing weekend coincides with MLK day, many people are already off of work. I signed up for the early afternoon session and walked with the family down to Moore Lake during my lunch hour. The guides were super knowledgeable, and they had everything set up and ready to – including bait! 🪱
They talked about ice safety and showed the depth of the ice (over 20″ this and last year) – my 9yo daughter was especially concerned about this. The guide had half a dozen holes already augered, with a 5-gallon pail to sit on and Vexilar sonar rigs ready to go. They supplied the ice fishing rods and even had bait ready to drop in. Both times we’ve gone, everyone caught at least one fish.
2022 Catches
In 2022 all of our catches were small perch.
Marlo became the media darling of Fridley as her picture was featured in both the Fridley newsletter and the Parks & Rec catalog.
No aerator for 2023
For this year, there’s sort of an interesting experiment taking place. Moore Lake Park is being renovated in 2023. Part of the renovation includes the removal of a building that houses the aeration pump, so it’s not being run during the 2022-2023 winter season.
While the aeration system was installed to prevent winterkill, the real risk of winter fish kill is on the west side of the lake, where the water is extremely shallow. The aeration, which was intended for good, also has negative consequences. Like leaving a hole in the ice which tempts waterfowl to stay for the winter, rather than migrating south. Whatever the case is, I’m glad it’s being tried, and eager to see what the result is in the spring.
2023 Catches
Since the aerator wasn’t running, we were able to fish the spot that would normally be a hole in the ice.
Quickly after the guide refreshed us on using the ice fishing sonar, we started getting bites. He exclaimed “Fish on!” as we were all getting some action. This year it was nothing but fat sunfish, which was fun. Everyone caught at least one fish. Check out Jessi’s Blue Gill Sunfish, what a beauty! 🐟
10/10 Would Fish Again
Like I said, this event makes it so fun and easy that I considered getting ice fishing gear. But for $5, I could bring the entire family a dozen times to this event before I equal the cost of the sonar setup. Not to mention the ice auger, the sled, the ice fishing rod, etc. But it makes me think about it! Next year I might bring my Sonarphone T-Pod and see how it compares to the Vexilar ice-ducer. Or maybe I’ll look at something like the Deeper Sonar Pro+ 2 which has a ice-ducer like display on their app (and can be used in the summer too).
I’m still happy to talk down to the lake with the family once a year on my lunch break. We’re guaranteed a catch 🎣
Technology is great and technology sucks. It’s true that it’s the best of times and the worst of times. Technology is great when it works, but it’s terrible (and often unfixable) when it doesn’t.
This may be a farewell to my Fitbit Charge 4, and a warning to fitness tracker developers out there. Rigorously ensure sure it works or people will not just abandon your product, they’ll abandon your platform.
I had some issues with my Fitbit losing GPS signal, but I thought they were fixed. But they’re not…
I brought my new kayak to Lake Minnetonka and planned to paddle around Big Island. I’ve tried both GPS settings on the Fitbit Charge 4: Built-in GPS and Dynamic. Dynamic will use your phone if it’s nearby, then fallback to built-in. That day, I had the watch set to “built-in GPS.” I went down to the dock and hit start on my Fitbit. It was still trying to get GPS signal by the time I had my boat ready.
I went out on the water thinking the clear view of the sky would help it quickly lock on to GPS signal. I sat there for several minutes, then decided to switch to Dynamic since I did have my phone in the boat. After several more minutes of no GPS signal, I got my phone out. Opening the Fitbit app on my phone immediately established GPS signal. So I got underway.
Then as I rounded the first corner of the island, the watch vibrated. The screen displayed “Cannot establish a GPS Connection. Turning GPS off” 😡
You can see how far I had gone when the Fitbit gave up, it’s the untracked distance between the start and finish point.
Elapsed Time
Moving Time
Distance
Average Speed
Max Speed
Elevation Gain
01:19:17
hours
00:52:12
hours
2.27
mi.
2.61
mph
4.87
mph
0.00
ft.
The Strava app proved to also have (different) problems than my Fitbit
Strava App
I already had my phone out of my dry bag, which I didn’t want to do, because I’m in the water 🌊 But here I was, so I fired up the Strava app and hit record. Before got into the channel I got out my fish finder just to see if there were any lively spots that we should hit later on the pontoon. 🎣
But while getting out the fish finder, the Strava app decided to engage “auto-pause.” Auto pause seems like a good idea until it doesn’t auto un-pause. I was on the other side of the island before I noticed it was paused. While on the water I had to figure out how to unpause. I went into the settings and turned off auto-pause. Auto Pause settings are accessible by using the gear icon from the record activity screen. Not the main screen gear icon. ⚙️
Strava Auto-Pause Settings
But it was still paused! The only way to forcibly un-pause the activity was to click “Finish” which brought me to a confirmation screen, then I was able to choose “Resume” which un-paused the activity. It’s not clear that there will be a confirmation after clicking finish, so I’m showing an example here:
Strava Finish Confirmation (use to un-pause)
You can see the line that goes through the island on my activity. Clearly I didn’t do that, but that’s how it will be recorded “because technology.” Now imagine if this was your first experience with either of these devices and services. I wanted to throw both my watch and phone in the lake! 💦
But since I’m a glutton for punishment, I’ll be trying something else to replace these failed experiments. Currently looking at the Amazfit GTR series watches because battery life looks good. Recommendations welcome – please comment with your suggestions!
In 2019 I sold our old Alumacraft canoe to get two kayaks instead. It was sort of sad to see that old friend go. But it was purchased by a woman who worked for the Three Rivers Park District. I knew it was going to get way more use from her, so that made me happy.
In my shed I still had my canoe trailer for my bike, what should I do with that? An email to Wike revealed all I needed to carry a kayak with it instead was a different width crossbar. I made some measurements and ordered a new crossbar so I could keep the trailer for the ‘yak. Here’s how I tow my new Perception Joyride kayak:
This kayak uses perception solo mounts for ram accessories like fishing rod holders. They’re two large screw-in ball mounts. There’s an interesting side-effect of using these mounts – the ball serves as a rigging point for the Wike trailer straps.
The best rigging setup I found is illustrated below. The wike towing tee has a strap that would normally hook up to a canoe seat, but instead I run it around the solo mounts (shown in red). Then the straps from the cart go over and in front of the solo mounts, securing the tee strap in place (shown in green).
One of the most important pieces of this setup is a third strap that is not provided by Wike, from their site:
A third line (you must provide) from the bow ties to the post of the ‘T’ to keep the front of the canoe kayak from tilting up or down.
I used a small bungee to go around the beefy perception handle at the front and secure the Wike tee to the front of the boat. It seems to be at the perfect angle where the back of the boat doesn’t touch the ground, and the tee is at an angle where it doesn’t interfere with my bike rack.
Death wobble ☠️
One issue I have yet to solve is a fish-tail that seems to happen when I’m going very slowly uphill. It seems the cadence of my pedaling while standing, and perhaps the sway of the bike combined with the short length of the boat create a feedback loop. What happens is the nose of the kayak starts to turn left and right. Then the feedback begins and it starts turning more and more, as my pedaling seems to amplify the effect 😲
Death wobble is a misnomer – nobody died. It only happens when I’m going up a hill at 4-5MPH. I only describe it as death wobble because the sensation can be a bit unnerving.
The solution might be to stay seated as long as possible and adjust my cadence. Maybe I could load the kayak to put a little more weight on one end? If you have any ideas, comment below and I’ll try ’em.
When we moved back to Minnesota and started looking at houses before Jules was born, my realtor took us to a house in Fridley. I was dead against the place before we even arrived because I had mentally determined it was too close to my parents house.
I don’t know if our realtor did this on purpose or not, but he approached the house from the east (a route I wouldn’t have chosen), which showed that just down the hill is a lake.
There’s something in my lizard-brain that made me not hate the house because of its proximity to the lake and to my parents (for childcare reasons). I swallowed my pride and we bought it.
I wound up buying my parent’s canoe in hopes we’d launch on the lake nearby, but canoeing is an activity that is better with at least two people. Convincing my family to go was rare 🛶 So we sold the canoe and got two kayaks from Menards.
Those kayaks were fine, but eventually I wanted one with a couple of extra fishing features, without going to a full fishing kayak – because sometimes I like to just paddle around and sometimes I want to fish.
Finally the price listed was “view price in cart” so I did and checked out, saving almost $200 off the regular price.
How is it?
Construction, like the Swifty, is very sturdy. The handles are molded into the boat so they’re indestructible. For car transportation, I’d normally use the handle eyelets to run an extra strap to the rear hitch. The handles are too big for my normal strap hooks. I’ll have to add some rope or something. Bringing it home from the store was unnerving because the van has no sunroof and normally the handle strapping is what lets me know the kayak is still up there.
What I sort of forgot was that to equip fishing rod holders, I’d be investing another $100 in ram mount equipment. If you just want a couple of holes to drop your rod into, the Swifty and Mustang options are good choices.
The boat itself is great. It tracks very nicely. Strangely there’s no drain plug like on my cheapo Menards rig, so when the cockpit gets rain inside, it can be tricky to dump. I got a huge car wash sponge from Walmart to assist. I’ll likely buy a cockpit cover to keep water out during storage.
The back compartment is completely sealed from the cockpit, which is nice. In my old kayak any water inside the boat was going to get to the back too.
New Paddle Too
Like the kayak itself, I over-analyzed what to get. Deciding on length seemed to be the hang-up. I found this Paddling.com article to be helpful.
But there are several ways to measure. My torso is 30.5″ which calls for 210-230cm. My height is 5’10” and the boat is 29.5″ wide which calls for a 240cm paddle.
Having spent too much money at Dick’s on the kayak, I had a $20 reward to put towards a paddle. The Vibe Journey Paddle is the one that is in stock at every store, and it was on sale for $37 so I could get it for less than $20 with my reward. But it only comes in 230cm 🤔
Ultimately it didn’t matter because compared to the hardware store paddle I had, it was larger. 😎
On the water
On the lake it tracks very nicely. Not that the Menards one was bad, but this is clearly a step up. It’s got a nice place to hold my phone (put it in a dry bag!) and a water bottle, plus an indent to rest the paddle.
The problem that I have is not with the kayak, it’s with my nearest waterbody. I wish is that Moore Lake wasn’t bisected by a state highway 😞 It’s so easy to go down there, but it’s not as relaxing as it could be. The noise from the cars nearby is unrelenting. It’s especially bad if you want to go for a quick paddle after work, when everyone is battling their way through rush hour.
My wife bought a pontoon this summer and while I’m not an avid angler, it has given us more opportunities to go fishing. If you’re out on the lake, why not drop a line in? 🎣
I’m normally one of those guys that buys the waterproof lake map to keep in the boat:
These Minnesota-made lakemaps are no longer produced and considered “vintage” – but you can still get them at bait shops around the state. What about something a little more high tech, but not too expensive? I went to eBay looking for an old multi-mode Garmin GPS and got a nüvi 500 that has modes for driving, hiking, biking and boating.
Knowing that it was pretty easy to load Open Street Maps onto my handheld Garmin eTrex Vista HCx, I assumed I could do the same thing with the nüvi 500… Yes and no. You can do it, but it’s not easy.
Sea vs. Lake
The first thing to understand is commercial and free maps such as Garmin Bluechart and Open Sea Map are for ocean-going. The only lakes they cover are the Great Lakes and some very popular inland waters, such as the Boundary Waters. Loading those maps will allow the nuvi to switch to “Boat Mode” (you must have a nautical map loaded to switch), but they won’t have any info about your local lake. Also, the older Garmin Inland Lakes maps that used to work for this unit is no longer available. Planned obsolescence is an art, not a science 😩
Boat Mode
I found Jeff Jahr’s boatmode.img file which is an empty map with the nautical flag set that allows me to choose “Boating” as the mode. The file needs to be renamed to gmapsupp.img and placed in a garmin folder either on a microSD card (inserted near the battery) or on the device’s internal memory.
But you can really only have one or two gmapsupp.img files on the device (one in internal memory and one on the SD card). How can I add more map data? It turns out these img files act as containers and can contain many maps 💪 Here’s how I put them together
The Process
To put these together I used a Windows computer. All of the software shown here is available for MacOS as well. It is probably possible in Linux, but I don’t (yet) know how to do the GPX to IMG conversion. If you have Linux tips, share them in the comments.
Download Lake Contours
I get the lake depth contours from the MN DNR “Lake Finder” – just search for the lake you frequent and click the “Google Earth / KML” link in the sidebar.
That will download a lake.kml file. I always rename them to lake-name.kml (lake-minnetonka.kml in this case) and put them in a folder with the lake name, because we’ll be repeating this process and adding more files later.
Convert KML to GPX
Use Garmin’s free BaseCamp program to import the KML data into “My Collection.” With BaseCamp installed and started, drag and drop the lake kml file into the “My Collection” folder in BaseCamp.
I like to use BaseCamp because it keeps the contour depth labels when converting to GPX. The downside is it wants to copy those GPX files to your GPS device, so you need to have your GPS plugged in during the conversion.
Select your imported KML lake under “My Collection”, right-click and select “Send To…”
Choose your GPS’s memory card “User Data” folder and the conversion will start. There will be a progress bar under “User Data” while it’s working.
All of the lake depth GPX files will be on your GPS’s memory card in the Garmin -> GPX folder. I move those files back into the lake folder I created earlier for my KML file.
Alternative:
gpsbabel is a cross platform (Windows/MacOS/Linux) program to convert the KML files to GPX, but I couldn’t figure out how to retain the track labels (5ft, 10ft, 15ft, etc.) during conversion. If you know how, let me know in the comments!
Create IMG from GPX
I installed IMGfromGPX (Windows & MacOS only) to turn the lake contour tracks into a map. With IMGfromGPX started, drag the GPX files created by BaseCamp from your lake folder into the main IMGfromGPX window:
I set the Map ID to the last 4 or 5 digits of the Lake ID on the MN DNR site – just in case they need to be unique. Set the computer/device names to the lake name – that name is what shows up in the “Map Info” screen on your Garmin. For TYP file select “Thin.typ” to keep the contour lines thin. I don’t mess with track color since the default has been fine.
Check “Include creation of gmapsupp.img file” and then push the “Create map” button. It will prompt where to save your data – choose your lake folder. Ignore any prompts to run registry files – we’re not using these maps with MapSource or other mapping software on the computer.
Linux Only:
I think that mkgmap can turn GPX files into a Garmin IMG file. If you know how to do it, let me know in the comments.
Combine multiple IMG files
Repeat these steps for whatever lakes you frequent:
Download Lake Contours
Convert KML to GPX
Create IMG from GPX
Once you’ve got a few, we’ll combine them into one IMG file map using mkgmap. To install mkgmap, I unzipped the mkgmap folder in C:\Program Files\mkgmap-r4807. If you installed yours in a different place, your command for combining them will look a little different – just replace C:\Program Files\mkgmap-r4807\mkgmap.jar with the path to where you installed it.
Since my individual lake folders were all in my Documents\Garmin\Lake KML folder, my command to combine them looked like this:
Once they’re combined, you can copy the master gmapsupp.img file to the garmin folder on your microSD card, or directly to the garmin folder on your GPS’s internal memory. When you restart it, you should now have contour lines on the lakes you added:
Conclusion
Yes this process is a bit tedious, but it might give life to an old device that would otherwise get tossed out. I’m not sure if I’ll stick with this unit or not. It’s got some other quirks too – I immediately noticed the clock was wrong as part of some bizarro Y2K for GPSes problem that happened in April 2019.
If I try something different, I’ll probably get a Navionics subscription next summer @ $15/year and use my phone. But if I do ditch this GPS, hopefully this information will be useful for the next owner ♻️