The Underground isn’t the kind of blog to point fingers and go “neener neener” or anything, but a prior post’s concern about the dangers of walking on frozen lakes seemed eerily appropriate given this little news item:
NAMUR, Wis. – Twelve ice fishermen were stranded for hours on a huge chunk of ice that broke off from shore Thursday and floated into Green Bay, but rescue crews plucked them all safely from the large ice sheet, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
Three groups of fishermen had ventured onto the ice, bringing pickup trucks and all-terrain vehicles. But a large fissure ripped through the floe when a freighter passed through the bay, creating ripples that combined with high winds to break the ice.
The pickups and ATVs remained behind, and though there’s a good chance they’ll be recovered if the ice re-freezes, one wonders how insurance agents in ice-bound waters feel about this sort of thing.
As always, the Underground remains ever-steadfast in its support of those who choose to fish atop frozen bodies of water, though we draw the line at anything that might increase our auto insurance rates.
See you on the ice floe, Tom Chandler
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
First off, call me a sissy, but anyone who drives a truck out onto a body of water covered with ice seems to me to be a candidate for the Darwin Awards.
And second, the story had the quote: “Wolfson said the incident serves as a warning to other ice fisherman, who should… carry a cell phone…”
I am not sure what properties a cell phone possesses to prevent becoming a human ice floe, but I guess you can call the wife and tell her you might be late for dinner…forever.
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Damnit man, where’s your sense of frozen (possibly frozen and drowning) adventure?
And I still want to hear from the Corporate Insurance Establishment on this one; is driving your vehicle – and losing it – into a frozen lake a covered act? The Undergrounders really want to know…
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I enjoyed this blog on the frozon neurons (brain cells) of ice fishing. I lived in Northern Calif. most of my life and then movied to Southwest Idaho a few years ago. Could not get myself enthused about trying to keep warm, stay out the water ( both the body and the equipment, and getting my 4X4 in a place I’d need my winch to escape from. Your insurance question is a good one. I think I’ll spend the coldest days building the fly inventory in preparation for ice out…….
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Answer: Nope. Expressly spelled out in your insurance policy. If your vehicle goes through, you’re not covered. Y’all don’t have to worry that our enjoyment is putting your rates at risk, and you can continue your reckless ways. Not only that, but Minnesota and Wisconsin have very strict rules about what you must do next. If you don’t recover the vehicle within a few days (very, very expensive, as you might imagine), they do it and charge you even more.
I watched them pull out a snowmobile a few years back. Chainsaw a hole in the ice, send a guy down in a wetsuit, lay out winches on wood bases locked down with holes augered through the ice, then winch the thing up, then ramp it through the ice and onto the lake’s surface. Then, when it’s up, the vehicle is basically worthless.
On the other hand, it doesn’t happen that often except for snowmobilers, who are not the brightest knife in the shed. Full sized vehicles don’t go through that much. Ice is extremely strong, and it rests on water, which does not compress. The general recommendation is 18 inches of ice to support a vehicle, but that’s more than enough. Once locked up, lakes are extremely stable–ice expands, and once a whole lake is completely frozen, the ice has nowhere to go but up or out. Larger lakes typically sport huge pressure ridges (of course, the recent drift ice problem on Lake Superior is an example of the opposite; when the wind shifts, no ice is safe on a water body that’s not completely locked up. Lake Superior never freezes over completely.) When snow is plowed in ice roads, the cold reaches through and makes more ice. It’s early in the ice season here, and central Minnesota, but we have nearly 20 inches on the bigger lakes, and up north they already require extensions on standard augers, which means ice depths approaching 30 inches, which can hold around a thousand pounds a square foot.
Plus it’s nice to just drive out to your house, offload the kegs, fire up the gas grill and watch the Vikes get scrubbed…while fishing! My favorite part of ice-house-fishing is the rattle-wheel. I’m not making this up. It’s mounted on the wall of the shack, looks like a wheel of brie with bells inside and line wrapped around the outside. Leads down to a bobber on the water’s surface, and twenty feet below or so, a minnow on a little jig. You eat too much, drink too much, lose at poker, then turn in in your comfy bunk…but in the middle of the night…tink! tink! tink! The walleyes take slowly and swim away, and you roll out of bed, give the line a yank, haul in the fish, toss him out the door into a snowbank, and go back to sleep.
I’m a serious fly-guy, but I must admit–ice fishing is fun.
Dave
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OK Dave, somebody’s gotta say it; what you described is about 5% fishing, 25% eating, and the rest drinking. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that).
The Underground is, however, deeply concerned about your depth of insurance knowledge. You haven’t been reading your policies instead of tying flies, have you?
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one more reason IS you dont have to dig holes through the infinately thick ice and freeze your ass off waiting for your little flag to pop up .
mean while i am nice and warm at my vice awaiting the upcoming ice out
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Billy: Tip-ups are for weenies, damnit. A fisherman holds his own… err… rod.
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OK, this is true too, and not just because my broker is my brother-in-law. When I moved to Minnesota I got a special letter from the IN-surance that told me all about the falling-through-the-ice codicil. Apparently it’s genetic knowledge for the born-n-bred but the emigrants require special notice.
This is also true: last year I spent two days alone in a house on Mille Lacs Lake, which in French means “Thousand Lakes Lake,” or something like that. Very comfy house, bunks, heater, lights, etc. Fishing was slow but steady, and even I can’t drink and eat seriously while alone…so I tied flies. In about twelve hours of work, interrupted by the occasional bite from perch and walleyes and eelpout, I punched out four dozen assorted sand eel clousers and a whole bunch of crease flies, which whacked stripes the following summer on Cape Cod (and which are my secret Mississippi River big smallmouth fly…don’t tell anybody.) So, neener-neener, I have accomplished only what Master Super-Anglers can do: tied flies AND fished AT THE SAME TIME. Plus I was drinking, and listening to The LOON out of Brainerd, which plays “Brown Eyed Girl” once an hour.
Dave
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