Funny/Interesting Ice Fishing Stories

[FOOT]

Anyone out there have any funny interesting ice fishing stories from either this year or past years. I'll start off with a couple.

Many years ago 8 or of went together and built an ice shack to fish the Mississippi. We nailed an wooden orange crate to the wall to use as a shelf and had a wood stove for a heater.

We'd light the fire, drill holes setup the tipups, drop the lines inside the shack and sit down to play cards. The second time down fishing we noticed a mouse sticking its head out a little hole next to the crate. By mid year the thing was so tame that it would come out and sit there watching us and we could litterly feed it by hand. When a tipups would go off there was always a mad bash out of the shack but it soon didn't faze the mouse at all. Then one Saturday we found the padlock cut from the door. Opening the door we found floor to ceiling packed with snow. Nothing was missing except for the mouse, we never did see him again.

Then there was the time Dan dropped a watch, an ice scoop, a minnow scoop, keys, can of soup and 35 cents in change down his hole in one 3 hour period of time. We finally pulled his line and closed his hole so he couldn't "fish" anymore that day. Way too much Blackberry Brandy.

Or the time 3 of us were fishing the Maiden Rock Wisc flats. We were using my snowmobile and sled to get back and forth to MN. After a full day of fishing and having some pretty good luck, we headed back. Dave had not driven a snowmobile so I let him drive with Mike sitting behind him. I stood on the sled runners while holding on to the upper bar. Dave took off like a bat out of you know what and everything was fine until we hit the first pressure ridge.

My feet came off the runners and my hands came out of my chopper mittens. Dave and Mike kept going with my mittens frozen to the upper bar. Dave thought he heard someone yelling so he asked Mike if I was OK. Mike looked behind and saw my mittens so he thought everything was fine.

They didn't realize I wasn't on the sled until they got to MN and had to turn around and come back for me.

Well, there's 3 and I've got more. Anybody else ??

[Dan_L]

I got one that was funny for others but not me. we were fishing a contest on forest. at the last minute a kid on a 4wheeler runs over my tip up, rushing to enter a fish.

All that was left of my tip up was two inches of the base. I lost my favorite rig and all.

this kid ends up winning the contest with a $500 prize. drives past me and says sorry about that man. doesn't even offer to pay a couple of bucks for the damage.

[Deitz Dittrich]

I got a couple.. both from my way younger days.

First I was fishing, and put my rod down to get a drink of pepsi. Keep in mind this was a long time ago before rods had reels on them. Well, the rod shot down the hole with the pepsi can still in my hand. I started to cry, good ole dad said everything will be fine, he will rig me up another rod. Jus twhen he had everything all tied up, my rod popped up a different hole with the bluegill still attached!

The second is my most favorite, and one i think of often lately. I used to ice fish with my grandfather a lot as a kid. Gramps passed away this last summer. Anyway.. story goes like this. He and I and my mother and father are out fishing. Fishing the past month had been kinda slow, but that day the fish were really biting. I had stopped and was goofing around on the ice, my grandfather was getting quite angry and after watching me drill another 15 or so holes with a hand auger and race my hotwheels on the ice he finally had enough and came and semi yelled at me. "Deitz, what is wrong with you, the fish havn't bit like this all year. You should be fishing!!!" Like I said, it wasnt a full yell, but I could tell he was upset.. I put my arm around him and said(again, out of the mouth of a 5 year old) "gramps, if you had caught as many fish as I have today, you would need a break too."

[Bobb-o]

Was out on Red Lake last year when we really started hitting the crappies. We were fishing in a two man Trap, each of us having two rods down. My one buddy pulls up a fish and throws it behind him in the sled, then sets his rod in the mesh bag on the wall, and turns around to grab another minnow. at that point i set the hook on a fish, his other bobber went down, then my other bobber went down. we finally get all the fish up, and get those three lines reset, when he looks at the wall, and says to me, "ok, what did you do with my rod?" i of course am completely clueless as to what he is talking aboot. we finally figured out that in the commotion he must have bumped it and it landed perfectly in his hole and went down. He is really mad at this point, cuz he just lost aboot a $60 combo, so he starts setting up another rod. well he gets the other rod set up and down the hole and moves his vex over to check to see where his jig is at, when he notices a fish on the vex aboot 4 feet off the bottom. so he starts jigging for it for probably aboot 10 min, before he comes to the realization that it wasnt a fish, it was his bobber. so he grabs a different rod and rigs up a huge jigging spoon. and starts going nuts while jigging for this thing, like 3-4 foot jigs! meanwhile while he is doing this he occasionaly gets excited cuz he thinks he hooks into it aboot 4 or 5 times, but it turns out everytime that a walleye found this jigging pattern a little too enticing. I have never heard anyone curse out a walleye that much in my life. finally aboot 45 min go by and he decides to forget aboot the rod and just go back to fishing. he starts reeling his line up and hooks into the rod finally. provided me with some good humor for at least an hour.

[Walterwontfalter]

My good buddy and I were fishing with a bunch of friends from where he works on Lake of the Woods and we decided to split up into two groups. Ribbing eachother back and forth over the 2-way radios my buddy, who was in the other group, hooks a fish and the other guys hold the mike button down so we can hear him say; "Whoa! I got a big one on! It's a monster! Biggest fish I've ever caught...(short pause

)....It's a Walleye...it's a...(long pause)..what the @!$* is it?" Apparently the first eelpout he had ever seen.

[Wishin2BFishin]

Went to my favorite pond, not another person except on the other end of the pond. I was trying an experiment setting up my tipups in a straight line about 10 yards apart. Started catching LM Bass and some big Chain Pickeral. A guy I don't know comes walking up, doesn't say a thing to me and starts drilling holes not more than 15 yards away from me! I'm not too happy about it but hey I'm catching fish so I just let him go at it. He had one of those hand augers and the ice was thick (about 18 inches) for the area where I live. I'm still catching (and releasing) fish but he's not catching a thing! After about two hours he comes over to ask me what I've been catching so I tell him. He says he would like to catch some Crappies and wants to know if I know where they are. I told him I got into a bunch of them about 150 yards away on the other side of the pond last winter (true story). He packs up and heads over to where I told him to go. Works very hard and long to setup his tipups again when I get another flag! I pull in the biggest Crappie I ever caught 15 inches long and fat! Just to be a wise a$$ I yell over and show him the Crappie!! You should have seen the look on his face!!! I laughed for at least 15 minutes standing there alone on my piece of ice... Served him right for not asking if he could fish so close to me...

[juggs]

I'm fishing the Mississippi River backwaters with a friend of mine last winter. We're about 50 yards apart and the fish start to snap a bit where I am so I turn around to get his attention and I see him "dancing" on the ice. What the heck? Then I see a small, furry rodent dancing with him. When he finally gets to where I'm fishing he tells me he hooked a muskrat in the butt, pulled him up the hole, then stepped on his head so he could get his ninety cent jig back. After doing this he lets the critter go, only to have it charge him in anger. He says there are still teeth marks on his scooper. "Dances With Muskrats."

[FL SNIPER]

About 7 years ago me and few buddies were fishing in the chisago channel out of a permanent house that had about 7 holes side by side. Well one of the guys, Sean, is fairly inexperienced to ice fishing. Sean happens to get his line tangled up with the line in the next hole but thinks its a fish. Well the guy in the next hole, Steve, gets ahold of Sean's line and starts tugging back and forth like it IS a fish. Sean didn't realize it was Steve because steve was kind of crouched down with his back to Sean and was saying he had a tangle he was trying to work out. Well I realized what Steve was doing so I get in there and coach Sean on this huge fish that is ripping out line. So I have Sean totally bought into that its a fish and we keep this up for a good 15 mn....no lie! Well steve didn't know how to end it...so Steve had another guy slip him a full can of bush light beer. Steve was able to work Sean's hook underneath the tab of the can. So Steve sent the bush light can down the hole and you should have seen Sean's face when he pulled it up and it wasn't the big fish he thought he had on. And this was all in front of his future wife!!!! Oh man...we were dying because he had no clue. We still bring it up to him...."hey Sean, how are the bush lights biting these days?"

[icehousebob]

Was out exploring a So Dak lake for big Perch one day a couple years back. People were moving all over looking for the hot bite. I drilled two holes about three feet apart and dropped the Vex in one. It lit up well, so I dropped a jig to the bottom and got a quick hit. People saw me catching big Perch so they moved in a circle around me about 15 feet away and nobody caught zip. After I had most of my limit and had thrown several back, one guy walked over and said,"Sorry, but I can't help it." and dropped his line down my second but unused hole. The other guys around us thought it was terribly rude of him and I finally had to tell them that he was my brother-in-law's brother, and the guy who brought me to the lake. When the two of us limited and packed up, there was a mad dash for those two holes.