Top Ten Things Not To Do When Ice Fishing

Our first Top Ten List, selected from a long history of ill advised antics, stupid tricks, and outright idiocy. Here we go.

• Number Ten -- Dump all the gear out of the plastic sled and try to use it as the board for a snowmobile propelled windsurfing jag in concert with the canvas of the portable shack.
• Number Nine -- Go get a drink out of that little puddle of open water out near the center of the pond.
• Number Eight -- Sleep in your homemade ice shack overnight, especially if you've had the time to install one of those vent free propane heaters on the inside, but no reflectors on the outside to keep snowmobiles from smashing into it.
• Number Seven -- Stab yourself in the hand with a rusty steak knife in a desperate attempt to open a can of Fancy Feast and chum your holes before the warden arrives to check your license.
• Number Six -- Dispute said warden about why that thirteen inch fish in your bucket is a Brook Trout who had a clean patch bit out of his tail fin, not a short togue that your dummy partner (or you) decided you were keeping no matter what species it was.
• Number Five -- Stick your thumb in a chain pickerel's mouth because he's half killed your last smelt and you still don't have a single salmon to take home to momma.
• Number Four -- Suspend the last of your beer from a string down into the hole nearest your shack, then drop a baited hook down the same hole and hope that you get the chance to wrestle an eight pound pissed of togue through a six pack of bud and an eight inch hole.
• Number Three -- In a drunken stupor, declare "Guy's don't worry, it's got enough gas in it. We're just going across the lake and back."
• Number Two -- Again in a drunken stupor, throw that friendly bald eagle that's been hanging around all day the only legal salmon you caught all day instead of one of those damned pickerel, because through your beer goggles you can't tell the difference between one and the other.
• Number One -- Throw your steel hole skimmer at said bald eagle, in front of said warden, because he's more than happy to make off with said salmon.