A close call with ice at Duck Lake

Give it up. Ice fishing for this season, that is. Even if you find an area lake with some ice, chances are good that the ice is rotten.

Here’s this week’s safety pitch — don’t get crazy when it comes to fishing open water on lakes that still have some ice. Veteran anglers know that trout fishing can be pretty good right after the ice leaves. But be careful if there’s still some ice, even when fishing open water.

Quite a few years ago, some friends and I fished Duck Lake on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation on a day in early spring when there were several large areas of open water near the west end of the lake.

We fished around the Duck’s neck and the big rock that anglers who fish Duck Lake know well.

The day was sunny. The wind was calm. The open patches were at least twice the size of football fields. The area, just south of where we were fishing, near the cistern, was still ice covered.

About mid-afternoon, a few clouds rolled in, and the wind picked up from the south. When we noticed the size of open water on the north side of the lake was shrinking — and shrinking fast — we kicked our float tubes as hard as we could to make it back to the west shoreline.

We could see a huge expanse of ice moving north. Within minutes, the open water was gone and the ice began piling up on the shoreline. Then more ice was pushed onto ice already deposited on the rocks. Then more ice and more ice and more ice.

The ice formed a wall at least half as high as the trees. We guessed the ice at 12 feet high. If any of us had been trapped in that moving ice, we would have been pushed high into the trees and, no doubt, crushed by the compressed ice.

It was one of the most spectacular scenes I’ve ever witnessed. Once again, don’t mess around with Mother Nature.