Here’s a fishing story that is not a tall tale.
On the final week of winter walleye season in Minnesota, several families got more than they bargained for when they went ice fishing. They spent the weekend trapped in fish houses at Mille Lacs Lake as a blizzard with winds topping 40 mph raged around them, WCCO reported.
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“If you were out there Saturday night in the storm, you were cut off,” Aitkin County Sheriff Dan Guida told the television station. “Mille Lacs Lake makes its own weather. We get snow all the time and it’s bad out there when it blows.”
Barnacles Resort and Campground used its Facebook page to update the stranded anglers.
"Right away in the morning, with the wind blowing and white out, then I knew it was going to be a bad day," James Kromer, owner of Barnacles, told WCCO. "I went out and tried to help everybody and I couldn't see out there, I just, we pulled the plug and got off the lake."
Conditions were difficult. Newly plowed roads were covered in snow quickly, and vehicles got stuck or broke down near the camp.
"There was like 5-foot drifts up to the hood of my truck," Rick Frascone, of Cottage Grove, told WCCO. "We were buried."
Still, fishermen like Frascone were upbeat as crews tried to dig them out of the snow.
“I was understanding. I was loving it. I was hanging out in the ice castle. We still had gas and propane so we were warm,” Frascone told the television station. “They ran us out pizzas, we were good.”
Guida took a more serious tone, noting that families should bring extra food, extra propane, and above all, check weather forecasts, WCCO reported.