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When it comes to fishing, others don’t always know best

There’s something about ice fishing that makes a person gregarious. Sometimes we see a bunch of folks out on the lake and think, It must be safe. All of those people have to be catching something.

That’s what happened near the Ohio shoreline of Lake Erie this winter. The ice had formed for weeks, and a little warm spell in early February made everything look better.

Ice was two feet thick on parts of the lake, so fishermen used planks and wooden pallets to cross an open crack near the shoreline. The fissure became larger as the morning progressed, and soon more than 100 men were stranded 1,000 feet from shore.

One man fell into the water and later died, while volunteers and rescue personnel helped some of the others. Many sat and waited until help arrived, but a few reached land by riding their all-terrain vehicles five miles, to where the ice hadn’t broken away from shore.
One fellow said no one seemed scared, and another stated there was no danger with all of that ice. A woman from the Ohio Division of Wildlife reminded fishermen there is no such thing as “safe ice.”
This wintertime episode was preventable, I think, but folks can become careless when they see others taking chances. There’s something about a large group that makes us more confident than we should be, in my opinion.

I can remember summer fishing trips where folks got to watching each other more than they should. A sturgeon fishing trip with my brother and his wife was a good example.

We left the dock late the first morning and headed for a spot I had fished before. The bay was large, but boats were concentrated in an area with which I wasn’t familiar. I dropped anchor at my usual spot and sat all morning with few bites.

The second morning was different. My sister-in-law couldn’t go, so my brother and I headed out early, dropped anchor in the usual spot and waited for action. Before we knew it, there were boats all around us.

A couple of fellows motored up close and dropped their anchor. “You doin’ any good here?” they asked.

“No,” I told them. “We fished here yesterday with very little luck.”
These fellows stayed a while longer, then pulled their anchor and moved toward some other boats. “You doin’ any good?” they asked the other men. Then, they dropped their anchor and resumed fishing.

A couple of hours later, my brother and I became so bored, we pulled up our anchor and motored a mile down the bay. There weren’t any boats in the area, but that seemed fine to me.
Pretty soon, the two old guys with their little boat came drifting by. “You doin’ any good here?” one of them shouted.
“Nope,” I told them again.

So, they moved 30 feet away, dropped their anchor and started fishing as usual.

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.

2/25/2009