ice fishing

Tie a line to a frog's leg and drop him in one hole, he swims to the other.

Dan, The easiest and most common method is with1 gal milk jugs. You wait until the first freeze starts forming sludge around the edge of the pond, lake or whatever (doesn't work well in a river). You paddle out a ways and tie line and decent weight or rock to the milk jugs. Drop your jugs in the water about 30' apart. Line should be long enough to reach the bottom and a few feet slack. You then tie about 30 feet of line between the jugs. You tie a weights to each end of the "cross line" about 4 feet from the jug. If you viewed the setup from the side it would appear as an H with long legs. Obviously the deeper the lake the longer the legs.

It is also helpful to put a couple of split shot along the cross line to help keep it below the water line. Small shot as you dont want center weight to cause a sharp V shape. As the water freezes the slack will allow the jugs to remain near the top of the ice. That lake all looks the same once its frozen over. Also doesn't hurt to pace off or triangulate the jug location with known objects on the bank.

Now you know the secret. Don't tell everybody! p.s...the second part of the secret is that red or blue laundry detergent jugs show up a whole lot better that white/clear milk jugs do in the ice! You would learn this on your own but not until the second season!!

Mark

"daniel peterman" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@storefull-3232.bay.webtv.net...

Yes , I do, more or less. In 1972 , I was visiting a friend in Alberta, when I came across a peculiar mechanism in his back yard. I asked him what it was , and was told that it was used to take a rope from one hole in the ice to another so that a net could be dragged between them.

My memory is a little hazy about the details, but it was a plank about 2" thick,10 or 12 inches wide and 8 feet long. There as a slot a couple of inches wide and about a foot long in the middle of it. A metal lever about 3 feet long was pivoted on pillow blocks on the underside of the board with about 6 inches of the lever extending through the board. This end had another hinge joint on the bit that extended through the board. and the whole thing was spring loaded. The long end of the lever had a ring in it ,to which a long rope was attached. To operate it a hole was cut in the ice and the plank was pushed in. It floated up against the underside of the ice, and every tug on the rope propelled it forward about half a foot. It made a noise when the plank banged at the ice on every stroke. You followed the noise and cut a hole in the ice above it when you had enough rope out, retrieved the plank, hooked your net onto the rope and pulled it back to the first hole.

As I have lived in Australia or Fiji ever since then, I haven't had much cause to think about it until now.( ice in those quantities is a little rare in this part of the world) This is pretty accurate I think, but the detail of the joint that contacted the ice is a little fuzzy in my mind. At least it should point you in the right direction if you decide to design one.

good luck Tom

Tom, that is correct answer. The Inuit have been doing it much that way for centuries. I saw it demonstraed on some Dicovery channel show a few years ago and it was like a slap on the head or a whole big box of lightbulbs dropping on my noggin. I think my old man just wanted to mess with me like he one time he brought home an artificial leg that he said his company reposessed from a one legged man because he couldn't make the payments on the thing. We took it down into basement and proceeded to cut it up into small parts just to see how it was constructed. Nothing fancy. Just wood and a simple metal knee hinge. I took it to school the next day and people were kinda grossed out.

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005 17:41:28 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net (daniel peterman) quickly quoth:

Whassa "hole in a frozen,"?

Go with the flow of the creek/river. Bore the drop hole upstream and drop a floating object down the hole to reappear in the downstream hole.

For a lake, I'd tie a passel of bamboo rods together, end to end, with a floater on the end to pop up through the hole once it got there. Reeds would do if they were the only thing handy.

Luckily, I've never lived in a bloody frozen wasteland which required anything as savage as that.

LJ--Ex-Southern boy and recovering Arkansan.

------ We're born hungry, wet, 'n naked, and it gets worse from there. -

You load up the dynamite, shotguns, and dog in the brand new ford explorer...

oh, nevermind.

Boring one hole, getting something colorful through the ice and some distance away and then boring another hole to retrieve it is probably the right way.

But here's another idea that might work, and includes more metal content ;-)

Bore two holes. Make up an assembly consisting of a thin steel wire joining two heavy weights, with retreival rope attached to each weight as well. Drop one weight in each hole, and wait for the pressure to melt the wire through the ice (which will refreeze behind it). Supposedly this should work with pressure alone, though of course you could speed it up by running a current through the wire to heat it. It may not work so well if the water is much shallower than half the distance between the holes - chances are the wire will melt through at the ends first and in the middle last, and if the weights bottom out before that it may get stuck.

Why bother with all that? Just take along a can of peas and place the peas in a circle around the edge of the hole in the lice. When a fish comes up to take a pee just grab him.

Badaboom

Errol Groff

Instructor, Manufacturing Technology H.H. Ellis Technical High School

New England Model Engineering Society

Yep! I've seen the Darwin awards too.

Tom

I'm pretty sure you don't need the second hole if you're fishing with dynamite. Karl

Sorry I guess my L, A, K,E keys musta froze up there. Hey it gets down into the 50s (F) at night Here in san san Diego and it's hard to type with mittens

I like that one. Kinda like a hot wire foam cutter for ice. I'm a gonna have to drive a few hours to find a frozen lake around here. Maybe I'll try it out in the sink first witha big chunk of store bought ice.