Posts: 2,841
Threads: 0
Joined: Jan 2004
Reputation:
0
Headed up to Jordanelle with my brother yesterday afternoon with ice gear and a borowed hut to try our luck on a lake I've never fished. He was surprised how much more ice there was since last week when he was there. Still open water in the middle but closing fast.
Wanted to get away from the parking lot so we walked out to the farthest ice hut and kept going. Drilled some test holes and found safe ice so we kept going. Finally stoped and drilled some holes to actually fish in and started marking fish everywhere below us. Twenty three feet of water and almost all of it had fish in it. My brother caught two or three real fast and missed several more while I could hardly get a bite. Fish moved out so we set up the hut and tried to get everything in. Two people, four poles, a fishfinder and a lantern filled it pretty full.
Once it got dark we were the only ones left and the ice really started to pop and make it's usuall noises. I finally started catching fish and had both poles rocking with hits so I wasn't too woried about the noise until the ice seemed to shift and drop below us. That was something new. We made coments about how we were glad we weren't near the edge of the ice or we would be floating out into the lake by now. Then there was a really loud pop and the ice moved again. My brother stepped out of the tent with the lantern to find a quarter inch crack in the ice by the hut and water starting to come up through. We loaded the sleds and made for the car.
[signature]
Posts: 6,352
Threads: 0
Joined: Jan 2006
Reputation:
0
Not good man. That shizz is scary.[shocked]
[signature]
Posts: 3,669
Threads: 0
Joined: Oct 2003
Reputation:
0
[cool]Yikes! That is interesting. I've never had the ice do that next to me before where water actually started coming up through the ice. Glad I'm not fishing Rock Cliffs for another week and a half...
[signature]
Posts: 326
Threads: 9
Joined: Oct 2004
Reputation:
0
You said the ice was "safe" but you didn't say how many inches thick it was. I'm curious.
[signature]
Posts: 2,402
Threads: 6
Joined: Jan 2006
Reputation:
0
Geoffrey! Have you been out fishing yet this winter? When you coming up to Mantua? I have some waxies I owe ya.
[signature]
Posts: 2,932
Threads: 0
Joined: Apr 2005
Reputation:
0
thats exciting when it moves right under ya. i love to watch new ice trecky,s faces the first time they feal and hear it. o man remembering some of them right now. was night fishing at the berry about 11,30 pm a giant qauke is the only way i can describe it. water shot up over a foot out of the holes and the noise. we climbed out and some thing looked realy differnt water shooting in the air out a giant shift sevral 100 yrd long. some ice in the mourning was sticking up 2 feet and 100,s long. made a long walk a ton longer.
[signature]
Posts: 1,181
Threads: 0
Joined: Oct 2003
Reputation:
0
Hey so what happens is that when it's extremely cold like this.....the cold actually causes the ice that's already formed to crack or split and this is what causes the noises. Unfortunately, in your case the crack occurred right under you almost. What will happen is that the water coming through the crack will eventually soldify and freeze and meld the crack together again. But yeah that is freaky!!! No doubt about that.
Posts: 3,669
Threads: 0
Joined: Oct 2003
Reputation:
0
[cool]Derek, yeah, I've been out ice fishing. See that Pelican thread for more details. The week before that I hit the rock (see the rockport threads from about a week ago for that report). The week before that I got skunked at Utah Lake (unless you call a 4 inch whitie a non skunk day).
We need to hit Mantua soon, but after Pelican, no other bluegills really compare, so I hope that we can find some perch, bass, or trout to suffice...haven't heard many reports from there this year-have you been, and if so, how was the fishin'? I need to get up there soon...
[signature]
Posts: 2,436
Threads: 0
Joined: Jan 2004
Reputation:
0
We call those noises "singing". When the ice is singing, it's getting thicker. As it gets thicker it compresses the water under it, (Ice is less dense than water, so 1 gal of frozen water is larger than a gallon of liquid water.) as it expands. It does this because it is easier to compress the water than it is to compress the dirt along the edges.
Eventually something has to give and the ice cracks, shears, swells up or is pushed downward. It moves. When it moves it cracks and sometimes the pressure is released by ejecting some water to the surface.
As long as there is not water flooding out of your ice holes, your not sinking. I've seen these flooding cracks with 36" of ice. On huge northern lakes there can be cracks 2' wide at the surface with ice 6' thick, big enough to swallow a truck, because the bigger the ice sheet (size of lake) the more expansion that has to take place.
[signature]
Posts: 744
Threads: 0
Joined: Mar 2006
Reputation:
0
That must have been pretty freaky, although, I am almost glad that it happened to you so everyone could give these explanations. Very interesting and informative. Great thread.
[signature]
Posts: 3,614
Threads: 0
Joined: Jan 2003
Reputation:
0
here one for ya..
was fishing yuba years ago around 81 or 82.. mid march 4 inches of ice temp's in the 30's.. and we walked around a open spot betwine the clifs and island to get on the other side of the clifts.. well around 2:00 we hear a big bang from the north.. i look down the ice to see a 2 foot wave of ice rolling our way.. the wave hit us about 20 seconds after the big bang.. water shot about 5 feet out the ice holes and freeked me right off the ice.. we had to walk the long way around the island to get back to the painted rock ramp..
just one of the times i've been scared right off the ice.
found out later it was a earthquake down by delta some where..
[signature]
Posts: 2,561
Threads: 0
Joined: Jul 2005
Reputation:
0
That doesn't sound like any fun at all... [shocked]
[signature]
Posts: 3,614
Threads: 0
Joined: Jan 2003
Reputation:
0
at that point and time i was having to shake my booty good and fast to get out of there!! i'm not sure if my buddy was leveing a brown streek or not but I sure could have been. he did not catch me tell i got to the truck.
the ice around the clifts was bracking up all the way to the island and reverbrating back our way.. for what seemed like houres but only seconds i seen the ice behind us bracking up and comeing our way from the south this time.. but it hit the thicker ice in the midel it stoped bracking up and just waved the ice around for a while..
i did not ice fish the rest of that year..[shocked] after that it took a while for me to even want to get back on the ice..
[signature]
Posts: 2,841
Threads: 0
Joined: Jan 2004
Reputation:
0
My guess is the ice was about 4 or 5 inches deep. We never mesured it.
[signature]
Posts: 744
Threads: 0
Joined: Mar 2006
Reputation:
0
In case anyone is interested there is a very interesting article in National Geographic about some people crossing the Arctic Ocean ice flows and the experiences they had with breaking ice. Interesting too to se some of the pictures of the ice--definitly supports what some of you have said about the nature of ice and how it shifts, etc.
[signature]
]