stolen ice shack

[ryan the poor college kid]

my friends permanent ice shack was stollen recently on sheridan lake in the black hills,SD. i know most of you don't fish in the hills, but is there anything i can do to find it? will GF&P do anything to help? i am just to pissed off right now do anything.
if any of you do fish in the rapid city area, it is a homeade fold down shack with black fabric-like material.
you know, this is the second time i have been ripped off this year. what the ##### is hapening to this world?

[Don in Denver]

Sorry to hear about your loss. BTW< what species of fish do you catch at Sheridan Lake? I've got a friend with a place near there who has invited me up to fish. Good luck getting the house back.

[Chuck Pederson MN]

Sorry to hear about your loss also, one year I lost a TV, VCR FL8 Auger, binoculars, rattle wheels, Tackel and a few rods. They busted my locked door off the hinges. I was insured and now I just use a portable and never leave it. I'm surprized to hear that Rapid City has ice wasn't it 60 out there last week. When you getr re-rigged I'd put pontoons on that house and troll for trout out there. Hope you come out OK check your home owners mine paid for my loss minus 250 deductible. Good luck.

[mudpuppy]

Reminds me of an incident that happened to a farmer friend . He had a tarp covering his tractor come up missing . A few days later he was driving by the local local lake , & there's his tarp ! The neighbor kid had stolen it & made an ice shanty out of it ! And it had the new owners name written on it with 4 inch letters (according to Michigan law). Real smart ! He also had to pay for the tarp (the farmer laid this law down). Hope your friend has similar luck & the theif too !!!

[ryan the poor college kid]

thanks for the words of advice guys! my friend checked with his dad, and the insurance company might pay for it. i hope so. the only downfall i guess is the fact that we will have to make a new one.
Don in Denver: sheridan has really good populations of perch and crappie. perch during the day, and crappie at night. for some reason, no one likes to fish at night for crappie out there?? we do, and fish till midnight and have a blast. last sat. there was 13 inches of good clear ice. give it try.

thanks again guys for your help.
ryan

[rickk]

gee Ryan,...if this keeps happening,..maybe you need to hide a "Lowjack" in it,...it would be a shock to the guy to find the law knocking on his door!,..also could be used for your/his car the rest of the season,..with the car ins discount, it might not be all that expensive,..( i really don't know how expensive but a friend of mine has them in several of his construction machines,..of corse they are much more expensive than cars so its even more woth it,..but he also somehow had a false bottom in a tool bin with a battery w/one,.)Worth the $? prob not,..only your satisfaction to catch someone,...

[rickk]

Wow! sorry about the spelling,...I'm REALLY tired!!!!! Shuda at least read it before sending it,...

[Don in Denver]

Ryan, how big are the crappie?? I'd drive 6 hours for great crappie fishing!! Do you get a lot of them? I love that nighttime ice fishing!

[Neal/CO]

Don, Dave Kooser and I stumbled into a school of big slabs at Glendo back at the 2000 Get-together in OCtober. They were really nice fat fish like I used take for granted back in Kansas. I guess Glendo has decent population of crappie, but this is the only time I have ever seen them? They were all in the 1-1 1/2 lb range, really nice fish.n We found them on a rock slide along the south shore by the dam.

[Judge Roy Bean]

I'd sure like to get the culprits in my court room. Any man who fools with a guys equipment is the lowest form of life on the earth.

[Don in Denver]

Small world, Neal. I grew up in El Dorado, KS. My grandpa and I did a lot of winter crappie fishing at the heated docks at Fall River and Toronto (35-40 years ago). I miss those slabs!! I've never fished Glendo but I've heard enough about it that I have to give it a try this year.

[ryan the poor college kid]

well good news guys! it turns out that my friends dad had some sort of sportsman insurance that covered it, so this weekend we are fireing up the saws and hacking some wood in order to get a new shack on the ice before the tournament on the 27th. yippee!
to aswer your questions on the size of crappies on sheridan: well, the biggest we have caught is 10.5" with the average around 9". not real big, but they taste dang good. we each keep four and that makes a good meal for us anyways.
thanks guys and i am going to look into that lock dealy.
thanks again.

[ryan the poor college kid]

one more thing, is it common in minnesota and that area for ice shack to be stolen/vandalized? maybe it's just this west river south dakota water, but i have talked to more than a hand-full of people that will not put their shacks on the ice due to this???

[Rickk]

Hard to believe that some of you leave TV.s VCR's ect in your ice houses. I guess you have a much better morality in the midwest. Here, I wouldn't expect that that stuff would last more than a few days before its gone (the time it would take for some people to check it out.) We have a house on an island in the middle of the lake,..as soon as the ice is frozen it is usually broken into. At the north end of the lake,..it used to be not so easily accessable,..but with snowmobiles, they are broken into all the time. I lock my car every time I go into the house even if its for minutes (I can remember a time when we would leave the keys in the ignition and our doors unlocked when we were leaving for the day,)..those days are gone forever......

[eye1]

Well not everybody here in the midwest has such high "morality" levels.Just this past Wed some ahole kicked in the front door to my house while everyone was at work.Luckily the dogs scared them away so nothing was takin ,still it really ticks me off.Woulda loved to catch these clowns.BANG - one less scum bag.

[Andy K]

Neal, I think the Wyoming State record for crappie came out of Glendo.
What side of the dam did you guys find the slabs?

[Fshngyd]

Hey Ryan, used to live in RC for a few years, great place!! Hows the Pike at Sheridan? I used to catch alot of big Pike out of there, and do you ever get to Angustora? Lots of eyes and smallies! Would like to make it back up their this year, sure do miss it.

[ryan the poor college kid]

Fshngyd:
we caught a lot of pike this fall in the boat while bass/pike fishing. none were real big, however. it has been real slow all winter for pike through the ice.
i fished angustora last year for the first time last early spring and we caught 25+ nice sized walleyes. went a couple other times and caught some more nice sized walleyes. i heard a couple years ago there was a walleye that was around 13# caught out of there.
also, orman dam has been a good walleye producer for us. i am only out here during the college semesters so i couldn't tell ya what it has been like in the summer, but i will be here this summer on an internship and i got the lund!!!!

[Backwater Eddy]

Not to be a smart @ss but consider this once, just for the sake of discussion.

This season there has been a lot of reported stolen shacks in ND, SD, & MN. We have also had very little snow and the temps have been warmer then average. The only constant up here is we are considered the "Saudi Arabia of Wind", it blows, and blows, mostly from the West. In fact a wise investment would be to invest in the new wind generation farms slated to pop up on the ND & SD prairies over the next few years. Lessen or dependency on foreign oil and clean energy, I like the plan.

Ok back to the missing shacks, you guessed it, many shacks are found on the East side of the lakes. If they are not anchored well they can sail like a ice boat if the conditions are right. I have remember hearing of one shack on Devils lake found 2 1/2 miles away after a big night wind in warm weather.

But there are also the bonehead schmucks who rip people off, either there fishing gear, by vandalism, or the whole dang shack "POOF" gone.

Be a bad deal if I caught someone with my shack wondering away from where I put it Eh!

><,SUMO,>

Backwater Eddy.....><,,>

[ryan the poor college kid]

i hear the wind debate. but, i could only have wished that the wind would have been the thief in our case. drove around the lake for nearly 2 hours and since we had wind gust of 60+ mph's the day before, thought that was the problem. not so. i only wish i could find who stole it. it wouldn't be good.
thanks guys

[Rickk]

Sorry about your loss,...I guess bad guys are everywhere,..BTW I once heard of an old trick,..may not apply to your situation but if you come into a house and you are not sure a bad guy is still there or if indeed it was broken into,..(say someone left a door unlocked or you notice a window open that you don't remember leaving that way, or esp if you have an apt or staying at a hotel/motel,...is to place a $20.00 bill in the most noticeable place,..if you open the door and you see its gone,..back out and call the police. (assuming everybody knows that 20 is to never be taken) I did this in a rented place that I was using one summer,..apparently they hadn't changed the locks,..well I lost the 20,..never got back the other stuff,...but you don't want to run into a some druggie high out of his mind either,..a police friend of mine some years ago put at least one of the 4 shots in the chest with a 38 to a guy on Angel dust that was coming at him with a club, before he went down,..the guy had bludgened two people before the police got there,..the cop said the each of first shots knocked the druggie down but he sprang up like he was unhurt,and kept comming.

[4EYESONLY]

Yes its a shame this sort of thing happens all over. I live here in Fargo and I had a portable iceshack stolen right out of the back of my truck. Drives me crazy that they would have the nerve to steal it right in my own driveway in a very populated ,well lit neighborhood. To top it off the boneheads couldn't take it out of the back the easy way they drug it over the side of the box and scratched the ever living @#%$@#% of the side. Now that makes me mad...........like we've all said ..wish I knew who did it. I can't imagine even doing something like this especially when I know how hard I had to work to buy this and boom....some dirtbag claims it for himself. What a world we live in........

[Rickk]

Her's another one,..I had a friend that just purchased the most expensive Weber grill,..after washing it,.he fired it up really hot to burn off any oil or anything that could be left on it and when down the road for a few minutes to get steaks,....he walks behind his house with two big steaks and can't believe the grill is GONE. When I saw him he was railing on how could someone (EVEN) steal a red hot grill!!!?

[Fshngyd]

Ryan,
E mail me, maybe we can get something together for the Srping or Summer. Thanks.
express@actcom.net

[Neal/CO]

As you leave the Whisky Gulch and marina cove head east towards the dam. We found them schooled in 15-20 feet of water on the south shoreline.