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| Message Subject: A Winter's Story | |||
Ranger |
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Posts: 3868 | Ranger's Ice Misadventure December 2006 I drove out on LBDN one day to do some fishing. New to the area, I followed the "road" out to the shanties I saw from shore. Drive my Jeep right past the hotel onto the ice, how cool! 300 yards from shore, maybe 500. Set up the shanty and then a tip up. Fish! Slow, but fish, and very nice walleyes by my standards at 18"-20". Wind starts blowing, some snow, it gets dark. Weekday, I'm alone among the shanties. By the time I pack up, it’s real dark. Let's roll. Guess, what? No "road" anymore, its all windblown snow, and there's even drifts. And it's still snowing because I can't see lights on shore in any direction. Do I have a compass, or am I an idiot? Idiot. No phone. Well, the wind was blowin' from the NW, right? Um...they were, I guess. Jeeze, it's snowing harder. Gotta find that hotel, that's where I got on the ice. More snow flying now, from brights to dims. Drive drive drive drive drive STOP!!!!! Cattails in the headlights, 10 fom the front of the truck. Sheeeeet, that don't look right. Walk out to see if I can get thru and no way there's a steep hill past the tails. Back to the truck, turn left and try to stay close to what I hope will remain the shoreline. Just keep it to the right, right? I immediately lose the shoreline and I'm back out on the open ice again, plowing thru drifts that are getting alarmingly bigger. Creeping along at 5mph now, it's really snowing. Great tires on the Jeep, perfect to get out to the open water or back to hard land. Keep the wind to my right quarter panel and just go. Now comes the mind control part. Don't panic, don't add to mistakes made. I can spend the night out here if I have to, got a half a tank of gas for the truck and I can stay warm with the Coleman lantern on low if I just keep the windows open some. Got a full half gallon of Coleman fuel. I'll live as long as I don't foolishly drive all the way out of the bay into the open big water. No matter what, don't panic, just and go real slow, stop when I have to and don't leave the vehicle. Family will alert authorities and they will find me in the morning. I sure don't like this situation. I'm pretty scared, but know to just stop, and that's what I'm feeling is the safest. But first, I'm going to try to turn back and see if I can't find those cattails. They should be no more that 50 yards away and I'll drive using the gusting wind as a guide. I've decided to go no more than two tenths of a mile, no matter what, because I'm pretty sure that the open water is like a mile south from where I started fishing, and the wind isn't likely to be blowing from the south. Nevertheless, 2 tenths of a mile and I'm stopping for the night. That's the deal, I'm not going to be the jerk who puts the rescue guys in danger because I don't know how to be safe on big water. I'm already a jackass by all reasonable standards. I do know to not panic and to STAY PUT if this last try doesn't pan out. Drive drive drive 5mph in 4WD and STOP! I can't believe it but here's a shanty like 5 feet from my front bumper. I get out to check it out, if I'm REAL lucky, there's folks fishing. No luck. But through the snow I see there's a couple more shanties around. You thinkin what I'm thinkin? I stroll around an bit and get to a place where I see that these are the same shanties that I started fishing near. To make sure, I grab the spud and start sliding it through the snow in the area where I figured I set up. (Yes, I carry a spud anytime I ice fish, even with deep ice, I just gotta smack the ice when I walk where I haven't walked before.) No spud action, but my boot heel hits a fresh hole, filled with snow now, of course. STOP! Ok, if this is my hole, which is extremely unlikely, then the second hole should be right aboutttttt here. And poo my pants there it is. Dang, I'm back where I started. I line up the shanties where they should be and drive straight toward what should be the get off the ice spot near the hotel. Drive drive drive and there's the shore. I get a glimpse of some lights to my right and head that way, stopping every 20-30 feet to get out and check the shore. I get to a spot where I can see the lights well and walk a bit to see if I can find the get off. Looking back every other step to make sure I don't lose the truck lights. Bingo, the cattails stop and there's the get off, right next to the hotel. Amazing luck for me. Back to the truck, drive the 30 feet and make a left up the steep little hill off the ice. The Jeep climbs like a goat and I'm in the parking lot of the hotel. I've done some dumass #*#* but that one rakns near the top. | ||
| Sam Ubl |
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Location: SE Wisconsin | Whew, I was on the edge of my seat.. Expected the last time you said, "STOP", there would be open water in your headlights! Glad you got off safe. | ||
| leech lake strain |
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Posts: 536 | hahaha yah I was thinking the same thing, open water in the headlights!! | ||
| Herb_b |
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Posts: 829 Location: Maple Grove, MN | Good to hear you got off the lake OK. If you haven't already, you might want to invest in a hand held GPS. Mine got me off the lake more than once over the years. The ice is kind of thin in the Twin Cities metro right now. Even walking can be treacherous on many of the lakes. Up north, Mille Lacs has large areas of open water. There are few people ice fishing and unless it gets real cold real quick and stays that way, there is little chance the ice will get thick enough to drive on the lakes this winter. I have had my ice gear all ready to go since early December and still haven't been out. I was going to give it a try over the holidays, but I heard reports on the radio of people going through the ice just miles from my house and so decided to just skip it. Strange winter. Edited by Herb_b 1/13/2012 1:20 PM | ||
| North of 8 |
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| As I read it, I remembered stories from a couple friends when I lived in the U.P. Both had gone out on Keweenaw Bay with experienced fishermen to try their hand at ice fishing for lake trout through the ice of this bay of Lake Superior. The nasty thing about bay ice on Superior is that it can move, even when very thick. It happens so slowly that you don't know it unless you are watching a fixed point on shore, or more recently, a GPS. The ice mass can move away from where you got on. Both spent several tense hours as the "guide" drove along, trying to find a place where the ice met the shore and it was not a cliff. I heard the two stories at different times and the experiences were seperated by couple decades. One thing they had in common: They never went out again. In the upper harbor of Marquette, the ice moves in and out. I lived across from street from the big lake one winter, just north of the harbor and when I drove to work the ice might be out of the harbor. The next day it might be back in and guys were fishing on it! Now, many did drag jon boats or something similar, but holy cow, I never wanted a whitefish or coho jack that bad. | |||
| Ranger |
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Posts: 3868 | My big mistake was being too eager in a place where you can easily lose you life by being a dumba$$. | ||
| asingua |
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Posts: 91 | Now I know why I never really got into Ice Fishing. That's crazy! Must have been nuts! Glad to hear you made it off safely. | ||
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