Drain plug in or Out in fishbox

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would melt the rest of the ice faster.

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While this may be true on the surface, the for longer, overall temperature reduction it's better to let the water stay in.

Plug in for sure. If no plug you end up with a coffin box full of one solid chunk of ice. Gotta break it up to get fish in and it's a PITA

Keep plug in so you get a slush as it melts.

Take 2 buckets and do the test. Take one with just a bag of ice, and the other with a bag of ice and a gallon of water. Stick your hand in both.

If you want to go extra crazy, you can add some salt to the icy water and it will be even colder.

Now I don't know how big the boat is, but 20 bags of ice water is also a lot of slushing around. So you may need to be careful on how the boat handles it. But that big of a hold the boat is probably plenty big.

Keeping the water in it will keep it colder longer

I have seen it done on a charter boat that kept the fish box iced down for days.

But if I'm cleaning fish, they will be in a slush.

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Definitely want to keep the water. Never heard that thought process and don't buy it. The larger cold mass of water will keep the overall temperature colder longer.

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It’s actually the opposite. We leave the plug in to make it easier to ice fish, ideally it turns into a slush, but leaving the water in melts ice faster.

Air around the ice will act as an insulator. Water increases the surface area in contact with the walls of the ice chest/box and increases heat transfer in. The best way to preserve ice for a long time is to crack the drain plug.

I’m not gonna get into latent vs specific heat, but in short, once the ice has melted the damage is done and you’re not losing much of anything allowing it to drain.

I understand it's counter intuitive but it takes significantly more energy to melt a given amount of ice than it does to raise the same mass of water from 32F to ambient temp. The "coldness" comes almost exclusively from the ice melting, and what's causing the ice to melt is heat being transferred in from outside. The limiting factor to that heat transfer is surface area in contact with the heat source. Same reason large chunks of ice melt slower than crushed ice.

Sounds like a Sonic meetup is in order.























buy 2 ice slushies and poke a hole in bottom of one. First one to assume ambient loses.

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Air around the ice will act as an insulator.

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This is false. Water at 32° does a damn good job of insulating ice. The box is not air tight, so most of the air in the box will be much warmer than 32°

Spilled extra long chili cheese coney on my notebook. No science is happening today