OHIO — Ice anglers are taking advantage of the cold weather and subsequent ice cover on area lakes and ponds. 

Emergency officials are warning if you plan to go out on the ice, never go alone and always take safety precautions. Wearing a float coat and having an ice pick on hand can help if you fall through the ice. 

Bill Baum is an ice safety instructor. He's been ice fishing for 23 years. He says it's important to check the quality of the ice before going out. He advocates for at least four inches of ice for foot travel. 

"It has to be good, clear ice, not frozen slush because that doesn't really have any strength, so we don't even really county that," he said. 

Baum says if you fall through the ice, your body will have a cold shock response.

"First thing you want to do if you fall through, it's almost like a meditation. You've got to control your breaking," Baum said. "Your respirations are going to increase, your blood pressure increases, so the first thing you need to do is mitigate that. You've got to calm your breathing down and get yourself under control."

This can be difficult to do but it's critical to stay calm. 

Baum likes to ice fish for crappie and blue gill. He uses a sonar device that uses sound waves to help find and catch fish under the ice. He suggests that anybody who's interested in ice fishing, start with some basic training or find an experienced ice angler to learn from. 

The ice fishing season has greatly varied over the past few years in Ohio. Baum says over the last two years, the season has only been about a week but so far, this season is off to a good start. 

The length and quality of ice cover on the Great Lakes is something Eric Anderson has studied. He's a professor at the Colorado School of Mines. He recently completed a study that shows winter on the Great Lakes is getting shorter by about two weeks each decade. This means the Great Lakes are losing an average of 1.43 days of ice cover and near freezing surface water temperatures each year. 

Anderson says this is concerning because, "There are things that rely on that ice to protect habitats during the winter, one of those being our habitat along the shoreline in the winter. So, without that ice, the strong winds create waves that just beat up the coastline and lead to erosion."

Anderson says the decrease in ice cover equates to a change in the life in and around the lakes.