Will you run your boat in ice?

[ncboman]

I've done it when I trapped but doan like it one bit. :rolleyes:

[Bill Gunn]

Here's the launch we go to in Lewiston NY on the lower Niagara River (below the falls)
in winter, with the guys waiting patiently to launch...

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/289926591.jpg

Getting out can be a little work, but it's not always this bad,
just a lot of floater ice out on the river...

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/289926590.jpg

But here's why we do it, to get to the Niagara Bar,
out in Lake Ontario that never freezes
(Our group throws all fish back)...

Lake Trout
http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/289239810.jpg

Brown Trout
http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/56569888.jpg

Salmon
http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/39973219.jpg

Not all that uncommon for each guy to get 25 fish a day, and believe me,
It gets tiring netting all those fish, and at times the action in the
boat resembles a Chinese fire drill...

It keeps you warm too :D

[Bushman]

I've run in shell ice in the early spring after brown trout. That is that floating stuff broken up by the wave action, but I won't break ice. Any ice is real noisy and real hard on the paint job. I've fished around some big ice floating around out in Lake Superior, but you sure need to respect that big stuff or it will close off a harbor entrance on you. Back when we could fish the warm water discharge out of the nuclear power plant, that big pool stayed open all winter and guys would push smaller boats over the ice out to it. The rainbows were stacked in there like cord wood. Now those pools are off limits.

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

I have a hard time keeping ice in the ice chest much less any in the water. I hope I never have to find out if my boat will run in ice.

Alan

[Altjaeger]

Bill, those conditions look horrible but it also looks like the rewards are great!!!:D

[Hi Ball]

No way will I run our boats in any kind of ice! I don't even like being on the water in winter temps, just to many things can happen and most are not worth the sacrafice or your life!

[ncboman]

No way will I run our boats in any kind of ice! I don't even like being on the water in winter temps, just to many things can happen and most are not worth the sacrafice or your life!

+1

hypothermia starts off bad and quickly gets worse. Judgement and balance are the first things to go. A guy could drown in 3 ft of water.

I'll go out on cold water but I doan take no chances. I probably wouldn't be comfortable in some of the pics Bill posted.

[Bill Gunn]

It's just what you get use to, and you can see everyone here is use to, and dresses for the cold weather.
What you can't see from those pictures is how powerful the current is there.
The flow of the lower Niagara is over 200,000 cubic feet per second, about 1/2 half the flow of the Mississippi and in some of the best fishing areas it's only 5 to 700 feet wide !! Even with some areas with a depth of 90 feet, it can be 20 feet deep 30 feet downstream. That causes uplifts and a large flat spooky water surface that can be 6 to 8" higher in a space of less than 1 foot. There are whirlpools that very suddenly form that will scare the hell out of you, but I don't know anyone personally that ever got caught in one.
In an area I won't go a guy took his wife on a guided trip. A whirlpool sucked down the back of the boat, the guide and the wife died.
There's many areas I won't go, and some areas that NOBODY is allowed to go.
Here's where they pick up most of "The Floaters" after they go over the falls.... Devil's Hole ...
I try not to go there at all !!

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/380959276.jpg

They just passed a law that between Nov 1st, and May 1st. you have to wear a life jacket unless you are anchored (Easier to retrieve your stiff :D ).
The fishing is beyond belief on even days that are just "OK". If someone told me you could get "To TIRED" from netting fish to fish anymore, I would have never have believed them until I fished there.
I (and my friends) only fish when we feel like we'll enjoy it, I don't like it much below 32*F. The ice that will form on your boat on a real cold day can weigh 3 to 500# real quick, and it's a PITA to get it off. But even so, there's someone fishing there almost every day of the year (as you see from the pics) to catch 50" muskys, 15 pound walleyes, 20+ # browns, and salmon and lakers in the high 30#s all within about 5 miles of the river that is fairly easy (to us) to fish.
Here's a 24# brown from the area I fish..

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/380959274.jpg


The fight they put up in that current is hard to describe, it took me about 1/2 hour to boat a 28# laker in 14' of very fast water, and I was never sure who was going to win that pullin' contest...

[ncboman]

It's just what you get use to

Bill, I am very glad NOT to be use to that kind of fishing.

[Twanger]

Bill - What kinda safety gear do you bring in case somebody goes in?

[Bill Gunn]

With friends like mine...
Once their in the water, we throw big rocks at 'em, and take their fishing gear home.

It's a tough crowd, but lookin' at your Captain Jack Sparrow pirate outfit (I like it !)
you'd fit right in, and I know you'd like the fishing (bring your best fishing gear, I've got an (old) inflatable vest you can use) !!


Truth is we all wear life jackets at all times and have ropes to throw,
but even that doesn't guarantee anything at all, you have to fish safe.

We have a great reminder to be safe.....
The ONLY drownings I EVER heard of in the area I fish were 2 Coast Guard guys. They lost it EXACTLY where I caught that 28 pound Laker shown below.
Right at the point the Niagara joins Lake Ontario there is a Coast Guard station. On a not so windy evening they were hot-rodding their "Unsinkable" boat (This was 8 years ago, and the "Hot-rod" part was VERY hushed up, but there were many witnesses that seen what they were doing earlier in the evening).
They were in the water for about 4 or 5 hours, in the dark, with flairs and 3 Helicopters flying right over them, and not seeing them, their flashlights or flairs !!


Mess with the Niagara (or as you know, any body of water) and it will kill you, treat it with respect, and it's the most fun you can have with your pants on (even if your wearing shorts on a cold day) !!
People fish (and duck hunt) there almost every day of the year, and it's fun (maybe a little cold like deer hunting) and safe.

Here, read the story, and then when you think you might be rescued.... remember, they ( the rescuers) pretty much knew where they were, they (the victims) had flashlights, flairs and dry suits and 3 helicopters and numerous boats looking for them.
And 2 of 4 are dead....

http://www.lifesaving.com/news/news_articles/news1/news10.htm


I fish alone out on Erie in a 17 footer all the time. When alone (especially when I run my auto pilot) I wear my "Keep Bill in the boat rope" that will not let me fall out of the back of the boat, and a vest. There's nothing more disheartening than treading water, and watching your boat on a heading that in 250 miles, will have it hitting land in Lower Michigan...

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

That causes uplifts and a large flat spooky water surface that can be 6 to 8" higher in a space of less than 1 foot. There are whirlpools that very suddenly form that will scare the hell out of you,

My mind kinda fixed on this part. I realized that I am surely a flatlander and a flat water boater, hold the ice please.

Alan

[Bushman]

I need some help on this topic. It's not that I won't run my boat in ice, it's how do I run my motor? One of the ways that I can get into some outstanding deer hunting public land is to run my boat across a 23' deep section of river about 200 yards wide. This year I put in on Friday, the day before season and ran a 14' aluminum boat upstream from the landing. I was using a 9.8 Merc which seemed about the right engine for the job although my buddy said that I should use my bigger outboard for ice breaking if the need arose. Saturday got there and shell ice had formed around the boat. Saturday evening 60' of thicker ice had the boat encased. I was able to power through that, but the biggest concern was freezing up the outboard motor. No water pump stream so I sure wasn't comfortable running that motor very long without proper engine cooling. If I left the motor down it would freeze in with the rest of the boat. If I tilted it up it wouldn't drain out and the water pump would freeze anyway. My buddy said that I should take it off, stand it up when everything is warm to drain and then put it back on the boat. That is a lot of messing around with gas lines at a time when a guy wants to remain scent free. Taking the motor off to coddle it or bring it inside every night to thaw out is a nuisance. Next year I'm thinking of using my 10' jon boat with an electric motor, but that isn't the ice breaking machine that my 14' Lund is and you need some hp to power through ice. I've thought about using an even smaller outboard, but lots of the little ones have sheer pins and sheering a pin in the middle of that river in the dark is not a good alternative. Any suggestions?

[Bill Gunn]

Bushman,
I'm honestly very surprised your motor still runs !!
Overnight you are freezing a slug of water in the tube that runs up the shaft from the water pump to the cooling water passages in the motor right at the river water level.
When we fish the Lower Niagara in winter ALL the motors are run for about 2 to 5 seconds OUT OF THE WATER after the boats are back on the trailer. This clears out any residual water that is in the pump or the engine, so that it won't freeze. This is done for all motors from 10 to 300 HP, and in the cold weather causes no harm to the motors.
Your engine in your outboard is receiving NO cooling (as you stated) as you run across the river, and also all the way back to the landing. The aluminum block warps very easily without cooling water. I'd say you have been very lucky !!

I know this sounds goofy, but if I had to do what your doing, I'd bring a collapsible saw horse in the boat. When I reached the point where you keep the boat overnight, I'd remove the motor from the boat, mount it on the saw horse and run it for a couple seconds to clear the water out. In the morning I would put the motor back on the boat and make the run to the other side.
I just paid $3500.00 for my 9.9 Pro Kicker. They ain't givin' 'em away fer free these days !!

[Bushman]

Thanks Bill, I was hoping that you would weigh in on this one. Yes, I can buy a lot of beef for 3k and it didn't take me long to figure out that my across the river hunting was doomed because of that motor issue. My buddy suggested that I dust off my bow and hunt that area when the river is liquid. Another alternative is to get myself a muzzle loader and walk over there on top of the river when the ice is thicker. He said if the ice was thin, I could push the jon boat across with my stuff in it and strap something like snowshoes on to distribute my weight so that I wouldn't break through. Somehow trying to swim with snowshoes sounds like a recipe for drowning. It seems to me that someone made an air cooled outboard, but buying a new kicker just for that sojourn seems like it might have a diminishing return.

Some of those smaller outboards lead a tough life at the fishing camps up in Canada. Guys auger them through the sand at the landing and fill the water intake and pump full of sand, then go out the next day with the water pump not working well. It might be the reason that lots of those camp owners rent the outboards and replace them every other year. You might want to reconsider buying a like new only two year old small outboard out of Canada.

[Bill Gunn]

If the ice isn't to thick you could run an electric transom mount motor. Just have someone up front breaking the ice.
I use to have a 3 horse transom mount years ago, it had a lot of power.
Now they rate them in thrust pounds, and I don't know how that converts to HP.

Check this one out... Kinda expensive for one use a year..


http://www.cabelas.com/product/Boating/Electric-Trolling-Motors/Transom-Mount%7C/pc/104794380/c/104716980/sc/104645880/Torqeedo-Travel-Motor/737560.uts?destination=%2Fcatalog%2Fbrowse%2Fboati ng-electric-trolling-motors-transom-mount%2F_%2FN-1100546%2FNs-CATEGORY_SEQ_104645880

[Bushman]

Thinking back a couple of years, I remembered an air cooled 5 hp Briggs & Stratton and sure enough they do make those, but that has a remote tank and it would do a lot of the same things as my 9.8 Merc in normal water only not nearly as well. Then I just Googled air cooled outboards and see that Honda makes a 2 hp four stroke with an on board gas tank. That would be about perfect for the side mount on my canoe or my 10' jon boat to get across that river if it was partially iced over. Chest waders to break through that edge ice and a light enough flat bottom jon boat to pull up on top of the ice so that it wouldn't freeze in might be the way to go next year. That little Honda is half the price of that electric on the Cabela's link too.

[Bill Gunn]

That does look like a great motor...

http://www.tackletour.com/reviewhondabf2d.html

[Snapdragon]

I have duck hunted many times in weather that often got below zero and have never had one problem with a motor that had the lower unit kept in the water. The water in the motor should drain down to water level and then stay liquid because it is in contact with the liquid water. The only problem I ever had was from tilting a motor and then not allowing enough time for the ice inside to melt when I lowered it. A water pump on a motor on a trailer should thaw when put into the water. A friend did break a water pump impeller when he turned over the motor while the boat was still on the trailer.

[Bushman]

Snapdragon, I guess that was my problem because the water was liquid when I put the lower unit in the water and left the boat tied up in the river over night, but the next morning there was an inch of ice on the surface and presumably inside the motor's water intake tube. Thinking that it would thaw out, I didn't run it very hard, but across the river that morning and back that afternoon it never did so I pulled the boat out, took off the motor and thawed it out and water did come out of it then. That motor is due for a new water pump anyway because they are only made out of little rubber fingers if it is the same as what's on my bigger Merc. The plasticizers leach out of rubber and old rubber gets brittle. I'm just not going to risk it again during freeze up. Next year its oars, electric or air cooled and a smaller boat that I can throw off the bank anywhere along the near shoreline.

Bill, why wouldn't it be okay to run an outboard in cold weather a little without a water pump? I know it wasn't designed to run that way, but I run an air cooled chainsaw two stroke motor a lot harder and hotter than that outboard ever got at low throttle. That four stroke Honda is air cooled and I had a 2 hp two stroke Mariner that I could use now that was air cooled and they run 5,000 - 6,000 rpm.

[Bill Gunn]

Well.....
It didn't seem to hurt yours so far,
but if it we me, I wouldn't push my luck...

[Adena]

I have a hard time keeping ice in the ice chest much less any in the water. I hope I never have to find out if my boat will run in ice.

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

OK, I'll bite. You're an admirer right?

Alan

[Bill Gunn]

OK, I'll bite. You're an admirer right?

Alan

Oh Alan,

You know we all are !!

(this is where the x's & o's go but not mine !!)

Bill

[stephan]

No way, I will not run the boat in the ice...Its too much Difficult to run the boat in the ice...