Joyce Beauchamp
Special to the Tribune
At 8:30 a.m. on Friday, January 16, a lone ice fisher set out onto Lake Nipissing from the Sturgeon Falls landing on a fast snowmobile, taking the flag line to the islands then veering west before Iron Island. It was -27C and he or she was just flying along, no doubt dreaming of stoking the fire in their ice hut’s woodstove. It was cold. Not at all like the weekend before, when temperatures hovered at 0C or above, melting the snow cover on the ice and creating pools of water. The Lake Nipissing Ice Fishing Board posted several photos of snowmobiles submerged in water. High winds had toppled a number of ice huts. One member posted, “watching someone’s outhouse blow past me.”
It’s been a rather old-fashioned winter this season. Lake Nipissing was frozen already in early December. Ice fishers sprang into action, hauling their huts out onto the lake, eager to get their operations set up by the January 1st season opener. Paul and Cindy St. Amand pulled their hut out to their sweet spot on the weekend of January 3-4 and were soon catching perch and pickerel. The ice they augured was 15 inches thick. Travelling over the ice was easy on their side-by-side with tracks. There were three pressure cracks to pass over on their way to their hut near Red Island, but only one pressure crack on the way back. The remaining pressure crack was the good kind, forming a hill instead of an overlap. When the ice cracks and one slab pushes up over the other slab, that can create a two- to three-foot ice barrier. But not to worry – a few chain saw cuts can cure that. Many ice fishers carry a chain saw.
When water freezes, it expands. A good cold snap not only makes the ice thicker, it makes it expand so there isn’t room in the lake for all the ice and the pressure makes it push upward and crack. Interestingly, it often cracks in the same, or similar, places. Those who regularly go out from the landing and follow the flag line know where to expect a pressure crack, and a second and third pressure crack as well. Paul St. Amand reports that when he and Cindy returned to shore after fishing, the weather had warmed up and there was only one pressure crack to contend with. Two of them had settled. Ice moves.
