Bob CollinsNow that the snow is gone and the ice is out on the state’s lakes, a fact of Minnesota life has been confirmed again: Ice fishermen are pigs.
Fargo Forum’s Mike McFeely wrote today that a Pelican Rapids man — Scott Richardson — has pretty much had it with the litter and filth they left behind again this year along Highway 108.
“I’m one of these guys who takes pride in my area, but I’m not the guy to go around cleaning up other people’s garbage,” Richardson said. “But this was so obvious and it was along a busy road that I just couldn’t stand to see it. Thousands of cars had probably driven by and seen this trash sitting there. It just reflects so badly on ice fishermen as being a bunch of slobs who throw their garbage in the ditch.”
Richardson picked up all of the trash, then brought it back to his garage and started trying to figure out who it once belonged to, McFeely says. He found an ID belonging to a plumber, called game warden Gary Forsberg and the plumber is $200 lighter.
First, it’s a reminder of how casually some people act about making their trash somebody else’s problem. Especially in Minnesota lakes country. Anglers profess to love the lakes and are concerned for their future, we say, but are still willing to leave trash behind.
“It’s amazing what we find on the lakes after ice fishing season,” Forsberg said. “It’s kind of disheartening.”
Beer cans, plastic soda bottles, sandwich bags, cigarette butts by the thousands, cinder blocks, bags of cement, chunks of lumber and a hundred other things are the least of it.
“People will poop in plastic grocery bags inside their fish houses and then throw it out on the ice and leave it there,” Forsberg said. “As soon as I see a plastic bag that’s tied shut, I know what it is.”
Lovely.
Related: Taking out the trash on Minnesota lakes (Area Voices)
