Ice Fisherman and Stupid People!

Ice Fisherman (or Sportman for that matter) and Stupid people do not mix!

I rarely go onto forum boards and P!ss and moan about stupid people, but this one has my goat. Especially when we encourage everyone to be smart, stay SAFE on the ice and be prepared. Anything can and will happen! A frozen lake can be a very dangerous place.

Here’s what I ran into tonight. I had to run to a project site today, so I left the office a little extra early so I could stop by a few lakes on the way and check some ice conditions. After I was done at the project site, I took another detour on the way back home to check on a few other lakes. The ice is looking great… nice and clear, no snow cover and should be fishable by this weekend if the weather holds.

Well, low and behold I stopped by the last lake on my list, pulled up to the boat ramp only to find that some JACKHOLE had thrown three 12”–15” size boulders onto the ice, right SMACK in the middle of the boat ramp where we get on the lake. This is downright stupid and DANGEROUS!

Can you imagine heading back to land at the end of a long day chasing fish only to slam head first into a snow covered 12”-15” boulder. This will punch a giant hole in anyone’s ice sled, tear up the driveline on any truck, rip the ski off a snowmobile or god forbid, flip a guy on an ATV. Can you imagine if that ATV had a father and his small son behind him. How horrible would you feel! Once the ice get thick enough, one of us will have to go out there with a spud bar and chisel those three boulders out of the ice just so we can go fishing.

I’m as excited to get onto the ice as the next guy. Yeah, I want to be the first of my buddies to post photos of the that first fish of the season, but some common sense goes a long way. If you want to check the ice, please do NOT throw large boulders onto the ice, especially where someone may be driving on the ice.

Safety first. We’ll be on the ice soon enough.

This goes right along with people dumping ashes from charcoal on the ice or building fires. Those ashes make huge holes when the spring thaw starts. There can be very solid ice and yet a large hole where the dark ashes melted faster when it starts to warm up. Don’t dump your ashes on the ice please.

Boulders on the boat ramp, happens every year here Good on boat trailers too if not removed.

Always gotten a kick out of idiots that think if the rock doesn’t go through, they won’t either!! Lol!!!

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Always gotten a kick out of idiots that think if the rock doesn’t go through, they won’t either!! Lol!!!

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If I could throw a rock(boulder) that weighed what I do I’d be getting rich on the freak show circuit!

Thank you for finally posting this. Please if anyone sees this action tell them how stupid they are. My son was riding on a trailer that hit one of those and was flipped off and got bumped and bruised and a few face scrapes from the snow and ice. I cant wait until I find one and give them a piece of my mind. Good luck fishing and be safe!!

No one can be certain it was fishermen checking the ice, although pointing out the obvious that checking for safe ice with boulders is not a good idea.

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If I could throw a rock(boulder) that weighed what I do I’d be getting rich on the freak show circuit!

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There’s no money in being able to throw boulders that weigh as much or more than you do. Trust me on this.

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No one can be certain it was fishermen checking the ice, although pointing out the obvious that checking for safe ice with boulders is not a good idea.

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For as long as there have been rocks I’m pretty sure kids have thrown them into lakes weather frozen or not. But there are definetly grown men that use that as a method to check ice.

I’ve seen it before here, always young kids that hurl them out there for fun. Similar to throwing rocks in the water at the ramps. Parents aren’t ice fishermen so they don’t see the harm.

The picture doesn’t quite do it justice, but the boulder in the foreground is about 15″ long, sticking up roughly 7″ and is about 10′ down the ramp. The one in the middle of the photo is sticking up about 12″ and is down the ramp a bit. The problem is that if they don’t get removed before the snow comes, we will end up backing our boat trailers into those things in the spring.

Kids throwing 2″ – 3′ rocks are one thing, but 80-90 lbs 12″ boulder is a bit much. Not even sure how the hell they threw those couple that far out there. Must have walked part way out and thrown them.

When I was a kid we use to skim rocks across the ice to see how far they would go. Until we discovered that if you get a piece of ice to through it would go out of sight.

Maybe the local curling team was out practicing, and forgot their stones. I hear that much like bowling there is considerable beer consumption at those events…all kidding aside, don’t throw big azz rocks on the ice.