News Photo by Mike Gonzalez A sign on U.S.-23 on Sunday indicates snowmobile trailheads and other permitted snowmobiling areas. This year’s abnormally warm winter saw a lack of winter sports, like snowmobiling, ice fishing, and more.

ROGERS CITY — The wintertime saw some small bursts of snow, but the warmer season this year led to canceled ice fishing seasons and lacking snowmobile weather across Northeast Michigan.

Winter days typically rose above freezing temperatures, resulting in a canceled lake sturgeon season on Black Lake for the first time ever.

Black Lake sturgeon season was supposed to start on Feb. 3 and continue until Feb. 7, but due to the rapidly deteriorating state of the lake’s ice, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources canceled the season altogether.

Brett Trepanier, president of the Black Lake Association and an angler, said that the strong snowstorm that blew through Northeast Michigan from Jan. 12 to Jan. 14 brought in six to nine inches of ice on the lake, but unfortunately wasn’t the kind of ice needed.

“It was white ice, which is bad, but we got maybe about four inches of fresh ice,” Trepanier said. “About two weeks before the season, the ice became softer and it just got worse and worse from there. We were debating if we even wanted to go out for the season, much less wondering if the DNR would cancel the season.”

Trepanier had angled at Black Lake for about 24 years and particularly enjoyed going out for the season, shack and all.

He said that while he was very disappointed to see that the season was canceled, he was also relieved that no one was going out on the weak ice.

“The ice was just horrible to get on and people like to gather together when fishing,” Trepanier said. “I’m hoping that the DNR will let us know what happens with this year’s fish — if they’re going to allocate the six lake sturgeon we were supposed to get this year into next year’s quota or if they’re not going to be included.”

The quota Trepanier mentioned is six Black Lake sturgeon, meaning only six can be caught among all anglers out on the water or ice during that season. If the quota is filled, the season is immediately finished for all anglers. If the quota is never filled, the season lasts the entire five days.

Another winter sport that had some luck during the chance snow storms, but never got enough traction is snowmobiling.

Dave Campo, president of the Presque Isle Sno-Trails Snowmobile Club, said that he and the team were able to go out on the trails only a handful of times, but otherwise never gained a good opportunity when there was enough snow.

“It’s been spring with the occasional dash of winter, this year,” Campo said. “We had some work to do on the trails, clearing out branches and bushes here and there. We also had to cancel our Trail Stop, or open house, in February due to the lack of snow. Last year, in 2023, we had over 125 people stop in. We also try to do a snowmobile ride to the U.P. to ride for a week that I set up, but we were unable to do that either.”

The snowmobile club, with the help of the DNR and Michigan Department of Transportation, cleared off a new snowmobile trail stretching from Trail 992 in Posen to the U.S.-23 Sunoco gas station near Rogers City for about eight years and had received a permit for it in November.

While there was not much snow, Campo said that he saw tracks going through Trail 992.

“I saw tracks on it and you could tell people were using it,” Campo said. “Now, our next goal to that is to get the north and south trail (between Rogers City) connected up with a good route. And that’ll help get people through the city there. So we’re gonna talk to the city council about that and we’re going to work on that over the summertime.”

Campo said that the club is working with the DNR to create a culvert for running water that goes through one of the snowmobile trails. He said that because it is running water, it never freezes and the club was hoping to help fix the issue.