Ice Drinking

 

 Sturgeon season thru the ice opened on Valentines Day. 

The season is scheduled to last 16 days, closing on March 1, 2026, or earlier if the predetermined harvest caps are reached.  

Great weather Sunday to catch some rays and maybe spear a really big fish….

 

Canadian Ingenuity

A guy from Moose Jaw invented a really cool ice fishing gadget called The Dipstick.  It is an ice fishing beverage cooler.

Simply drill an extra hole and insert your Dipstick into the hole. It holds up to 12 beverage cans. When you pull a can out of the dipstick the next can pops up as the bottom of the Dipstick retracts to get your next icy cold beverage ready for you.  Your beverages will stay as cold as the water you are fishing in without freezing.

It is lightweight and compact and fits 6” to 10” holes.

The Dipstick will make your ice shack the place to be! 

Learn more @ www.dipindeep.com

Ice Sinking

Yes, you read the title of this post correctly - Ice Sinking.  Although it is worthy of mention that this incident occurred during the Ice Drinking season.

The recent warm snap even gave my pal Sid pause and he had the presence of mind to fetch his ice drinking shanty and haul it to safe harbor on terra firma.  Not so much this dude.  He waited too long and plunged his fancy Cadillac Escalade through the thinning ice directly off-shore from Waterfront Mary's on Sturgeon Bay.

It took only a minute and a half to deep-six the expensive truck and the shanty to the bottom of the bay.

The driver escaped without physical injury.  Although I sure hope for the sake of his injured ego that this is a covered claim...

The Big Thaw

 

Here we are at the end of January and it feels more like spring and the cusp of mud season.  Although it's not muddy (yet) because the mud is still frozen.  But the snow and ice are melting from the unseasonably warm weather but because the mud is still frozen all of the melt water has got nowhere to go but to seek the low lands.

It is a lake of water-covered ice around here. Is it climate change?  Not likely.  More like a warm spell that's going to wreck havoc with the ice drinkers.

From Saturday - welcome to the world of ice and water from the big thaw...

click on images to enlarge

Ice Drinkers Rescued

In further news from around here - last week four guys from Illinois had to be fetched from the ice near the town of Gardner after a crevasse in the ice formed stranding them on the bay.

The Coast Guard, Sheriff's department, Brussels-Union-Gardner and Sturgeon Bay fire departments responded to the call for help.

Nobody was hurt.  

Details - including pictures - here.

Ice Drinking

Sid and Lawyer have been out on the bay working on their getting skunked technique of ice drinking.

No fish in any of these pictures.

I'm sure nobody was thirsty...

click on images to enlarge

The Big Walter

My pals Sid and Lawyer spent the weekend ice drinking on the bay.  They've got themselves real transportation too.  A $700 snowmobile.  Yabba dabba doo.

Here's Sid with a nice-size walleye taken through the ice on Sunday morning...

Ice Drinking

Lawyer and Sid and their Frauen are on the peninsula for the weekend.  They're staying at Sid's place on the bay side.  We all got together the last couple of nights for dinner.

Sid and Lawyer have been trying to lure me out on the ice to go ice drinking.  It's too early in the ice season for me.  In the last couple of weeks the Coast Guard has had to rescue a couple of ice drinkers when their ice broke-off and the wind blew them out to sea on their own personal ice floe.  Then another ice drinker had his snow machine break through the ice off of Little Sturgeon and sink in a fathom of water.  Until today it's been well above freezing temperatures so I don't want any part of it.

The Frau and the girls and I spent Saturday in 40 degree weather pruning oak trees.  On Terra Firma.

Sid and Lawyer caught a dozen perch and drank beer.