dear shanty

Not sure if this qualifies as a bad ice story but ill tell it anyway. I moved away from Michigan to the south (where there isn't any ice) for about 9 years but finally came to my senses and moved back. The first summer back i built a monster shanty that tim taylor himself would have been proud of. When the ice finally got what i thought was thick enough i loaded up my castle and went to the hard water. When i arrived at the lake there were about a dozen other fisherman out so i approached one of them and got talking to him to see how everything was going and to find out how much ice was there, due to the fact i had to drive my shanty out with my pickup.

The fisherman told me that there was about 10 - 12 inches of ice so i figured that there was plenty of ice. I drove out and placed my shanty right where i wanted it and returned my truck to dry land. When i returned back to the shanty my brother-inlaw had a strange look on his face. After he got his color back i realized that he was pale because there was only about 4 inches of ice that i just drove out onto like bekins house moving. The lessons that i learned that day was to always check the ice yourself and that if a crowd gathers while your driving on the ice there is probably going to be something bad happening.

yours truly

Subject: Bad Ice Story

Just discovered your website, nice to see other people as infected with the bug as I. Here's my story My buddy and I fish the Red River north of Selkirk for big walleye and pike (and ugly old Mariah) and one day early in Dec 1999, we were fishing away when a guy started yelling his truck, a new Dodge 4x4 was sinking thru the ice. The truck had been sitting there for a couple hours and there was lots of ice, so we thought he was loaded or something, turns out he dropped a front wheel thru a hole and the truck was stuck...nothing wrong with that you say?

Well thats what we thought too... this guy, he calls a tow truck which when he arrives sends out his winch cable to the guy's truck and hooks it to the towhooks on the front of the frame... the tow truck starts to winch the truck out, but instead of popping the wheel out of the hole, it breaks the ice even more , enough that the whole truck goes in!!! All you could see was the tip of the tailgate sticking out of the water, and the truck was still @75 feet from shore, with the ice solid right up to the shore. So anyway it took several people with chain saws to cut all that ice and haul it out of the water so the tow truck, which was still attached to the Dodge, could finally get it out of the water...So I dont drive on the river now unless there is at least 14" of ice and I have drilled some holes myself to make sure. Any way that is one of my horror stories, I got two more good ones for later Tanks alot tight lines

Scooter