How to avoid buying ice

Cheap plastic containers filled with water and placed in your freezer provides free block ice.
Cheap plastic containers filled with water and placed in your freezer provides free block ice.

Tupperware offers easy block ice — right out the tap

I grew up bream fishing with my parents, and they never bought ice. Instead, they filled used milk jugs with water, put those in the freezer and grabbed a few the morning of every trip.

It worked — but those plastic containers took up a lot of room, even after the ice began to melt.

Or we would cut the jugs off of the ice, which was a real pain. Literally: A loss of attention could result in a nasty cut from the plastic.

Crappie killer Tim Bye, however, has a solution that allows him to save the cost of loose ice without having to deal with those danged plastic jugs.

“I just fill some plastic containers (i.e., Tupperware) and put them in the freezer,” he said. “All you have to do is run a little water on the outside of the container, and the ice comes right out.”

Just run a little water over the outside of the container, and the block ice drops right out.
Just run a little water over the outside of the container, and the block ice drops right out.

The result is block ice that keeps his fish nice and cold, and at the end of the trip Bye doesn’t have to dig out slimy, stinky containers.

He just keeps a supply of containers ready to go.

“I haven’t bought ice in forever,” Bye said. “It works really well.”

And all he has to do is refill a container with water and put it back in the freezer so it’ll be ready for his next trip on the water.

About Andy Crawford 279 Articles
Andy Crawford has spent nearly his entire career writing about and photographing Louisiana’s hunting and fishing community. While he has written for national publications, even spending four years as a senior writer for B.A.S.S., Crawford never strayed far from the pages of Louisiana Sportsman. Learn more about his work at www.AndyCrawford.Photography.