Any large body of water that only partially freezes in the winter and that is located in an area subject to frequent and strong winds can, and will, present dangerous situations that everybody who recreates on said bodies needs to be aware of at all times; NOT just during the mid-winter and/or spring thaws. Flaming Gorge is one of those waters. Bear Lake is another.
Flaming Gorge will start freezing down from the north end and the ice will cover the Gorge slowly moving north to south. I have no statistics about how often it is completely covered, but I do know that it doesn’t happen every year. Anytime you have very large open areas (not ice covered) of a lake/reservoir adjacent to large iced areas and combine that with CHANGING temperature (causes contraction/expansion of the ice and massive cracking of said material) and/or winds in the right direction, there is ALWAYS the possibility of large sheets of ice breaking and floating away from the main body of ice. This happens every year on most of the Great Lakes and I’m absolutely certain this is not the first or last time it will happen on Flaming Gorge.
Now, compare that situation with Mantua, Hyrum, East Canyon, Strawberry, etc. These reservoirs are all 98 to 100 percent ice covered as I write this. The main ice thickness on these bodies of water is STILL anywhere from 12 to 20 inches thick. There is absolutely a zero percent chance that anybody is going to be left floating on a drifting sheet of ice on any of these waters today, February 26, 2014.
We do have a problem with water gaps around the shores of our reservoirs right now of anywhere from a few inches to a few feet. It makes it adventuresome getting onto and off of the main body of ice. I spent an absolutely wonderful day on Strawberry yesterday and suspect that it will still be ice fishable for several more weeks this season. There was easy access from the Strawberry Bay Marina, there was absolutely NO GAP anywhere that we saw, and the ice is well over 20 inches thick everywhere we drilled. We caught over a dozen trout and kept 2 rainbows and one cutthroat that came in under the slot. We met a very nice father and son duo that permitted us to join them and even drilled some holes for us.
The bottom line here is this. Ice fishing, as well as just about ANY outdoor activity, must be approached with safety considerations uppermost in your minds. The folks that got caught on that Flaming Gorge floating ice sheet obviously didn’t do that. From the photo, it looks like there were 3 people (3 people in yellow coats?) in the rescue craft. They used the safe approach to the stranded folks by crawling to them thereby spreading their body weight over a larger area to avoid any possible breakthroughs. You will also notice the ice is thick enough to hold a group of 5 adults all standing/kneeling together in a small area. That says the ice is plenty thick enough and safe enough to ice fish it. You can also see a chop on the water indicating the wind is blowing. It would appear that the group did NOT take that factor into consideration when assessing their safety issues. I wouldn’t fish within a half mile of that open water/ice line on Flaming Gorge.
I’m not telling anybody else to continue ice fishing if they really don’t feel comfortable doing so. But I’m still doing it happily and SAFELY.
Tight lines everybody.
