Seth Trobec was alone in a portable shanty, line in the water, when suddenly the shanty began to slide rapidly across the ice.
His fishing companion, Cody Mjolsness, had left on a snowmobile to fetch another friend and had forgotten to unhitch a tow line connecting the snowmobile to the shanty.
The accompanying footage, captured by a GoPro camera mounted inside the shanty, shows Trobec screaming while attempting to control his balance, and bailing from the shelter like a man jumping from an airplane.
“I decided to bail when I realized my buddy wasn’t slowing down,” Trobec told FTW Outdoors. “My thought was, we had some expensive gear on the ice, and I was afraid something maybe fell on the heater or into a fishing hole, and wanted to get back and make sure all was OK.
Trobec added: “The scream was a failed attempt to get his attention.”
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The men were fishing last Monday at Canisteo Mine Pit Lake in Coleraine, Minn., when the incident occurred. Nobody was injured and the only damage was a broken fishing line caused by the shanty being pulled over the fishing holes.
The footage shows Trobec’s dramatic exit multiple times and includes descriptive text. It also shows Trobec “picking up the pieces” after the shanty had been repositioned.
A few days later, Trobec posted a video showing him fighting and landing lake trout. He wrote on Facebook:
“I uploaded a couple more videos to my YouTube channel. I figured, with all the attention my first video is getting, I better show proof that I actually do catch fish out there!”
