Even with single digit highs on Tuesday afternoon, Lake Michigan waters near Kewaunee were basically wide open.

Steam coming off the lake water indicates water that's losing heat, and losing it fast.

The Army Corps of engineers say that evaporation plays a big role in bringing lake levels back down during the winter-- but it also indicates something else happening.

"As the ice forms, though, typically you have a lot of water evaporating because that usually is accompanied with the really cold snaps, so you've got this really cold temperatures over the warm water, cooling the water down. You get a lot of evaporation as that ice cover is forming," says John Allis, Hydraulics and Hydrology Chief with the Detroit office of the Army Corps of Engineers.

And ice formation is exactly what is happening right now along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

The latest satellite imagery from Tuesday shows shows this ice, still thin and broken, but unmistakably starting to form.

But even once the ice does thicken up along the shoreline, the lake still won't be closed for business.

Andy LaFond and his son, also Andy, run LaFond's fish market in Kewaunee.

They are among just a handful of commercial fishermen still operating in our area, and don't stop even when the harbor freezes solid.

"In the past, I've broken out of the harbor when the ice was three feet thick. It took me eight hours from the dock to the lighthouse, but I turned around and came home and hit it the next day and got to open water," says LaFond.

Once they make it out into the lake a bit, things usually improve.

And even if there is more ice cover than usual, they don't have to wait long.

"Our next are out about ten miles and down on the bottom, so we just wait for the wind to come out of the right direction and it opens up again," says LaFond.

Their biggest concern is losing power out on the lake, since there aren't many ships out there who could help this time of year.

But as long as the lake doesn't completely freeze over, the LaFonds will keep on fishing.

And since Lake Michigan has only topped 90% ice cover just 3 times in the last 50 years, they haven't been stopped too many times.