An ice floe detached from the shoreline of Upper Red Lake in Beltrami County, Minnesota, Friday, stranding the 122 ice fishermen on top of it.

The floe detached at around 4:57 p.m. local time, quickly creating a gulf of 30 feet of open water between the floe and the southeastern shore of Upper Red Lake, the Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office said in a release on Facebook.

Emergency responders were dispatched. In the interim, bystanders attempted their own rescues via canoe. The rescues failed, and four people fell into the water before being taken back to the floe to warm up in a shelter, the sheriff’s office wrote.

The emergency responders were able to rescue those four people from the floe at around 6:40 p.m. By 7:37 p.m., all 122 stranded anglers had been taken back to shore.

No injuries were reported, the sheriff’s office said.

Ice conditions remain poor across Minnesota due to rain and a spate of warm weather, the state Department of Natural Resources said in a Thursday release. There were three other rescues of anglers on Upper Red Lake alone between Dec. 17 and Thursday.

“Most years, the ice would be thick enough by now for vehicles and wheelhouses, and we’d be seeing a steady procession of them heading north. But this year isn’t ‘most years,’ and the ice is changing constantly,” Beltrami County Sheriff Jason Riggs said in the DNR release.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.