Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ice Fishing -Darwin Award contender

What kinda damn hole you got to drill through 6' of ice to pull a 35 lb fish out of it?

,...two people wrestling a big ass auger,.....one person standing aside holding a fishing pole saying, "Hurry up! Daylight only last 45 minutes this time o'year!"

I'm sorry,....but that just sounds depressing as hell.

I saw guys icefishing in Columbus, Mississippi. They were from MN and stationed at the base. The ice was maybe 3.5" white and clear combined.

Icefishing is like lots of other things. Spend money to get the proper gear, gather some knowledge, you will have a great time and get some great eating filets.

Your cork obviously doesn't float quite right, Bristoe...

10" ice- bits are the norm - and sometimes that's a tight fit (shee fish can get to 50 lb). I'm missing it already, having moved south awhile back.

The first time I went shee-fishing, I had 7 fish in 30 minutes or less. If they are biting, "45 minutes" is plenty. I have headlights on the snowmachine. Even on the shortest days 500 miles farther north (Barrow) , one has 4 or 5 hours of semi-lilght. the sun is only below the horizon for 5 weeks or so there.. In Kotzebue, 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where this pic was taken, it's only a few days - and a good 6 or 7 hours of "light".

As Staley Foster, an Eskimo who showed me how and took this picture for me said, "It ain't always like this!" He had about 15 fish by that time (better spoon) , and hang the nominal daily limit of 10.

True, there were less productive times... but when you can walk on water, it's all good.

Yeah,....but they were safe,...'cause in Mississippi people only fish off a bridge.

. You're on a roll Bristoe!

And some minor corrections to your perceptions.

Ice augers can be handled by one person tho 2 isn't too many - even through 5 or 6 feet of ice. It is interesting because it bites well until the last 6 inches or so, where the sea ice has more salt content and is more plastic. One definately can feel when it's about to break through. Me - I didn't have an auger, but I borrowed one from someone out there sometimes- usually they would even drill a hole for me. Most times, I just used a used hole - look for the bloodiest one...

Dunno about freshwater ice, but probably not on the break-through thing.

Shee fish (tom cod, and maybe some others up the rivers) are jigged, or caught in under-ice nets. The traditional Eskimo jig-stick is a curved spruce root 12-14 inches long. I just cut a piece of plywood and notched the ends. - works just as well. Jigs are usually "Docktor" spoons about 5-6 inches long. I used 50 or 80 lb dacron line, as do most. No need for a leader, but a swivel or swivel snap is necessary. Preferably a locking swivel snap.

But when they are biting, anything works, from a Daredevil, or generic knock-off, to a halibut jig of about the same size. I experimented. When they aren't biting, nothing works. a co-worcer made a jig out of a table knife handle. Worked.

In between....it varies.

This was one of those "you should have been here yesterday" days. Neither of us caught anything in 6 hours out there, but the ravens were cleaning up the leavings from the day before. A bad day of fishing beats the best day at work....

Years ago our fire department got called to pull two Darwin candidates out of the water in March. They rowed their boat out to a floating ice island to ice fish on it. Myself and another guy in SCUBA gear and dry suits left our Zodiac boat, went underwater under the ice for about 200 feet to pop up with them in their hole in the middle. They were pissed when we wouldn't go back out to get their buckets, cooler, and tip-ups....

My favorite ice-fishing story comes from the mid-west - Wis, or Mn probably.

Where they cut trenches in the ice.

Couple guys were working the anti freeze pretty good in their shack. A shack or two over someone hooked and lost at the surface a fish. Lab dives in after it, but comes up in the tiplers's hole.

They took the door right off....

Hey, we got ice in the pot holes here.

My friendand i watched a muskrat go into a porty. We waited for it, AHHHHHH! It was hilarious. Them dudes ran for their lives, screaming like girls.

Muskrats ain't to be under-rated. In HS, my brother and our two best friends were fishing, anchored out in the mouth of Knife River, ND. Hot day- we were in swim trunks. A two family group of muskrats came swimming across.

We thought it a good idea, soon disabused, to net a couple of the kits. The adults came aboard. Who knew those little bastids could jump 2 feet out of the water?

We left them the boat.... first smart move we made.

Edit: I should add - it was unanimous, without a word spoken! Pretty much every man for himself, in all different directions.

I like walking on water...

This^^^^.

Ice is for bourbon.

Works for fish flavored bourbon also - you can't get that just anywhere...

I'm wiling to bet ice thickness was not 5" yesterday, at least not past shore. It could have been 2" out to a couple hundred feet from shore but that is getting pretty trusting for holding 300 pounds of person and equipment. I've been playing on frozen water in one form or another for 45+ years and determined long ago there is no fish out there worth my life and certainly not the lives of those who will be called upon to drag my butt out of the hole.

Looking back over my career, I've been on 7 successful ice rescues and 3 body recoveries as a career firefighter and 2 successful and 3 recoveries as a volunteer. 2 of the three successes of the latter occured when others were able to get a rope looped over the victim and hold him above the ice until help arrived. Without that the person would have likely drowned.

As for carp thinning ice, it has been mentioned already. I believe both are correct depending on water depth and number of carp. The carp seem to prefer shallower, more protected waters over main lake areas in the winter but that may be skewed if they do not cause thinning in such areas.

Not as many vehicles go in as one might expect. There are pretty significant fines regarding this and they can accumulate by the day until the vehicle is removed rather than the incident. Mitigation of contaminants is also added to the fines if necessary. Plus, most insurance companies do not cover going through the ice unless certain conditions are met. So, the financial aspects of dropping a vehicle through the ice limits the number of times this happens rather than common sense.

Two people on a 10 inch auger? have never seen that, always drill where there's snow stuck to the ice even when wearing cleats. If you try that on glare ice get a dufus look on your face, smile bigly and wave 'cus someone will whip out a phone and video you spinning around the stationary auger.

We get that grab before busting through. When you feel it start to grab raise it up a few inches, let the RPMs build, and plunk it back down while holding tight. Or sharpen the blades. Drilling holes is fun. I'll Swiss cheese an area over structure and move until I find the right depth.

Ice is not for walking, riding nor driving on.

there's a polar bear sneakin up on ya

By January you can land heavy aircraft on the lakes here if they aren't snowed up.