Deadly Year for Vermont Ice Anglers – 3 Dead in 3 Days; Younger Brother Recounts Harrowing Ordeal

“Mark this day down,” said my younger brother Dana as he opened our conversation during a rare midday call. “I fell through the ice on Lake Champlain near North Hero (Vermont), but I was able to extend my arms to keep me from going under the ice,” he said.

It was January 22. He was remarkably calm. The harrowing incident had happened fewer than 30 minutes earlier and he was now in soaking wet clothes trying to shake off the freezing cold in his truck, the heater cranked to the maximum.

He was lucky. Other Vermont ice anglers haven’t fared as well, with three losing their lives in the last week. Two elderly men died after their Utility Task Vehicle (UTV), sometimes called a “side-by-side”, broke through the ice on Lake Champlain’s Keeler Bay, in South Hero, early in the morning on February 11.

According to a report in The Islander, a community newspaper covering Vermont’s Lake Champlain Islands, a 71-year-old Williamstown, Vermont, man was pulled from the water and…READ MORE.

by Ken Perrotte