Ice Fishing

[Don M]

Just got back from a bit of ice fishing with my daughter.  She loves this and 
for the first time in many years the inner bay on the lake is frozen (36 cm) 
solid during the holiday season.  It's only snowing lightly here (NS Lake Erie) 
and the inner bay is basically clear of all snow.  I'm not suppose to drive yet 
so my daughter loaded the S4 and headed off about 9:00 AM.  It's less than a 10 
minute drive from our place on the lake to Port Rowan where we decided to pass 
on the ice hut rental and do our thing.

We headed out across the bay she got up too about 100 km/h then a hard lock 
left dropped it into neutral resulting in 8 consecutive 360's before we slid 
sideways to a stop.  I'm was holding onto to my chest (its wired together) 
spilling my coffee trying not to laugh (more pain).  Anyway, she got out the 
power auger we borrowed from our neighbor and put down 4 holes and by 11:30 AM 
we caught our limit of pickerel (4) and perch (12).

We decided it would be fun to do a couple of high speed runs down the inner bay 
(about 8x5 km) less the 360's.  We went down and back a couple of times to make 
sure there were no ridges in the ice then she ripped down the bay hitting 180 
km/h at one point before she lost her nerve.  I will say this that of all the 
Audi's we own the S4 is the absolute best (stability) on ice even with 
non-studded snows.  The only thing I noticed was at above 140 km/h the S4 had a 
tendency to want to track right.  Not sure why, the alignment is as close to 
spec's as you can get and in reality who cares since I have no plans of driving 
down an ice covered road at these speeds anyway.

So, we got home around 1:00 PM she dragged her brother out of bed and they 
jumped into the '85 CGT and disappeared.  About an hour ago I was standing in 
the living room with the binoculars looking up the inner bay to see how many 
folks were on the ice.  I spot the CGT flying down the far side of the bay 
along Long Point with a couple of pick-ups and a compact of some type in the 
distance trying to keep up before they disappeared around the bluff.  I also 
spotted the OPP (police) 4x4 cruising around the ice huts so it will be 
interesting who will spot whom first.

Definitely the season to be a kid.

Don