I parked my car and embarked on a walk on the lake ice. I was interested in the thickness of the ice and headed for the dot in the distance which was an ice fisher.
The tracks look fine. The temperature was below freezing.
The ice fisher told me zander tends to dominate some lakes, particularly the small ones where it exists at the cost of good fish species such as vendace and perch. When I asked what the limiting factor for zander was he told me it may fail to reproduce if the summer is cold. Cold summers are getting scarcer by the decade as the climate changes, which is bad news for other species.
The ice fisher said it is too late for a good catch. One needs to go and fish in Päijänne, a much larger lake to the north. Because of its size the biological cycles are somewhat delayed there.
The tracks won't stay this good for long.
The large differences in temperature between night and day are causing the ice to expand and contract and giving rise to cracks like this. In larger lakes such cracks can be dangerously wide.
The ice fisher was still there.