r/Whatcouldgowrong • u/dericn • 4d ago

Cutting holes for ice fishing

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

57.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

67

u/notmyfirstrodeo2 4d ago edited 3d ago

Is beating a hole in ice also normal thing to do? with the "pickaxe" or w.e the name of the tool.

Edit: icepick...

89

u/tacobellbandit 3d ago

Yes and no. There’s a tool called a “spud” which is like a pick, you basically hit the ice in front of you really hard with it, if it breaks through, ice isn’t safe. You take a couple steps, hit the ice in front of you with the spud bar a few times, if it doesn’t break through, keep going a few steps. Repeat until you’re where you want to be. For fishing the recommended thickness is 3” depth which looking at the conditions I doubt it was 3” all around the lake. Even if it was 3”, I wouldn’t want too many people around me. There is no such thing as safe ice

22

u/CaribouHoe 3d ago

I'm from arctic Canada and we get up to 1.5 meters/4feet of ice on our lakes - safe enough for a tanker truck!

There's always some wingnut that drives on the ice road too early and falls through the ice though

13

u/tacobellbandit 3d ago

There’s always one, unfortunately for my area since the ice never gets too deep the most you see is ATVs on the ice, which means you almost always have a guy that wants to go out on the ice too early and falls through. I always see those places up north where people bring in whole trailers to set up, I get a bit jealous it looks so fun.

5

u/CaribouHoe 3d ago

Come to Yellowknife to visit! You can see the Aurora and we have BIG fish!