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Rescued 1 day, fishing for Erie walleye the next
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-09 08:54

PORT CLINTON, Ohio – Many of the 134 US fishermen rescued from Lake Erie ice returned to the miles-long floe Sunday using rented air boats to retrieve left-behind snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles and other equipment. A few ventured onto the risky ice to fish for walleye.


The belongings left behind by the rescued ice fishermen are seen on a slab of ice that broke free and floated away from the Ohio shoreline of Lake Erie at Oak Harbor, Ohio February 7, 2009. Some 150 fishermen were rescued from an ice floe in wind-whipped Lake Erie on Saturday after it broke loose from the shore due to warmer weather, officials said. [Agencies] 

About 300 fishermen were stationed on stable ice not far from where the crack had opened Saturday, stranding the anglers about 1,000 yards from the Ohio shoreline.

"(The ice) is an honest 14 inches," veteran fisherman Pat Chrysler of Put-In-Bay told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer in a telephone interview Sunday from South Bass Island. "I measured it with a Stanley tape measure, just to be accurate."

A Coast Guard helicopter surveyed how much abandoned equipment remained on the ice, but fishermen were responsible for recovering their own belongings, said Petty Officer William Mitchell, a Coast Guard spokesman.

"You'd have to be crazy to do that," he said of those who were fishing Sunday. "That's good to know that they're heeding the warnings, you know. I would definitely not recommend that at all, especially after what just happened. You know it's even warmer today."

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