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This Week's Column

Had we been ice fishing on a frozen river, there would have been no cause for alarm. But my brother and I were on a lake when, all of a sudden, our bait started acting crazy. As we lowered our beemoth-tipped jigs into the same holes we had been fishing for the past four hours, they immediately swept under the ice, as if suddenly there was a current.

Sequestered in our sealed ice shanty, sheltered not only from the wind, but also the rest of the world, I finally decided to poke my head out of the shelter. Surely one of the other fishermen in the area knew what was going on. To our horror, we were alone, on an ice flow floating away from land in Lake Huron.

We were lucky because other fishermen had already called search and rescue on our behalf and the rescue went relatively smoothly. We later found out, however, that this sort of thing happens to ice fishermen every year around the Great Lakes with varying conclusions. In most cases, the wayward anglers are rescued by helicopter. In a few cases, fishermen have died.

When venturing out onto big water, it is important to remember that lakes form ice an inch at a time, but often break-up in big chunks. The reason Great Lakes fishermen get into trouble every year is that they might be sitting on 3 feet of ice when the lake decides to break-up.

Under normal circumstances, 3 feet of ice can support a semi, causing anglers to become complacent about safety. In our case, we had even been visited by a couple guys in a station wagon just two hours before the ice broke free.

Warm air, rain and wind cause big lake ice to break-up. Rain and warm air loosen the joints on a previously expanding sheet of ice. When those events are accompanied by high winds, the joints, or pressure cracks, separate, sending thick ice out to open water. Flows can be as big as several football fields or as small as a garbage can.

Our biggest mistake that day was crossing a pressure crack on a warm, windy day to fish the lake-side of it. At the very least, we should have paid more attention to the conditions instead of focusing solely on the fishing inside a sealed shanty.

Fishermen and their gear are safe on the really big flows, provided they are also thick enough to remain stable. They require rescue in short order, however, since even big, thick flows start the melting process as soon as they break free.

And though rogue ice flows typically only occur on the Great Lakes and impoundments of similar size, there are equally dangerous scenarios that occur on much smaller frozen lakes and ponds as well.

Small lakes and ponds offer a different type of danger. They generally start the melting process along the edges. Runoff into the lake combined with shoreline that absorbs the sun’s heat faster than the open ice start the cycle.

This is a dangerous situation because often, just beyond the open shoreline, there is thick ice in the middle of the lake. Foolhardy anglers have been known to place boards across the open shore to get to the thick ice, but this is never a good idea.

As ice melts along the shore, thicker ice in the middle becomes cloudy. That is a sign that the ice is weakening. The general rule that says 3 inches of ice is enough to support a man does not apply to melting ice. In fact, 6 inches of cloudy ice is probably not strong enough to support a man and his gear.

The appearance of drain holes in the middle of the lake is also a definitive sign that none of the ice is safe anymore. These start to form as ice melts, providing runoff water a way to enter the lake. They look like spiders from a distance with dark, wet centers and legs reaching out in every direction.

It was nearly 20 years ago that my brother and I had to be rescued from that ice flow in Lake Huron. Add to that experience a couple other close calls on frozen lakes and rivers, and it eventually became clear that we needed to be smarter about when and where to fish. Now, once the melting process begins, no matter how thick the ice or how good the fishing, we stay home.

After finally falling through the ice on a frozen river a couple years after the event on Lake Huron, it finally sunk in that no fish was worth our lives.