When Seth Trobec and his buddy, Cody Mjolsness, decided to film themselves ice fishing for trout on Lake Canisteo in northern Minnesota, they probably didn’t expect to go viral. The small outdoor camera mounted onto their shanty tent showed a nice setup: chairs, a propane heater, extra duds, a radio, and a couple of guys just enjoying their day on the ice. They had drilled their holes are were settling into the day’s activities when Mjolsness decides to take the snowmobile back to land to pick up a third buddy. Trobec happily agrees, and keeps on with his work inside the tent.
A few seconds later, the snowmobile engine cuts on like a chainsaw. Trobes continues ice fishing, hoping to catch another big lake trout — maybe one bigger than the 30-incher the pair caught a few days ago. The snow was heavy on the lake that day, which meant Mjolsness needed to accelerate the snowmobile quickly in order to gain some traction.
“Cody probably figured he’d have to gun it pretty good just to get going,” Trobes said.
A couple seconds later, the shanty shakes and the comedy begins. Mjolsness obviously neglected to unhook the sled from the snowmobile, and soon the whole structure is flying down the lake with one terrified fisherman along for the ride inside.
“Hey!” yells Trobec, trying to alert his buddy. “HEY!” But it’s too late. Trobec has to bail out with one final, guttural, hilarious holler; face-planting in the white snow while his buddy tears off in the snowmobile. Nobody got hurt, which makes laughing at Trobec’s epic scream all the better.
Trobec was kind of amazed at that himself. “We didn’t even lose any gear,” he said. “Just the lure that was in the water that snapped off where the line got cut at the edge.”
One lure in exchange for a timeless Youtube video and a fantastic memory sounds like a fair trade to us.
Ice fishing causes a mayor to resign
Speaking of strange fishing stories, an Ohio mayor resigned recently after oddly comparing ice fishing to prostitution in an attempt at dry humor.
Earlier this month, Hudson Mayor Craig Shubert made comments at a council meeting suggesting that ice fishing at a local park could lead to more prostitution in the city. The story made national news for its bizarreness.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that city officials feared possible drowning and litigation against the city if residents were allowed to fish the local frozen pond. They also wondered if emergency personnel and other first responders would face additional problems.
“Does someone come back and say, ‘I want an ice shanty on Hudson Springs Park for X amount of time?’” Shubert asked at the meeting. “And if you then allow ice fishing with shanties, then that leads to another problem. Prostitution. Now you’ve got the police chief and the police department involved.”
Who knew ice fishing was such a dangerous, lascivious hobby?
