Ice Fishing Musings

Why would anyone want to leave their warm Saturday morning bed at 4:15am on a dark frigid morning - outside temperature -3F - and go ice fishing? 

The most difficult part is sepearating one's self from the warm bed.  The house was chilly as I pre heated thermoses, made some breakfast burritos, warmed soup to take along, and brewed coffee.  Once awakened, things improved.  

Mike had taken care of the logistics the day prior.  The red dually diesel sat outside the door, plugged in, with snowmobile trailer hitched on and snowmachines loaded.  The pull along sled was loaded with tackle box, fishing poles, and ice auger.  Helmets, coats, insulated bibs, gloves, and other warm wear was laid out and ready.  

The drive to New Fork Lake is about two hours.  We left the house about 5:30am to find black ice and snow packed roads, slowing down the drive and keeping me a bit stressed out the entire way.  At the parking lot, dusk was revealing the outlines of mountain tops behind a fog bank of cyrstalized floating ice crystals.  Hanging like a low cloud, the ice crystals fluttered down to the ground forming a thin layer of sparking diamonds.  The parking lot was 9F by then. 

We were meeting Benni and Don, two seasoned ice fishermen, ahead of us about a half hour.  Their tracks traversed the forest service trail.  At dawn, the light was flat, glasses were fogging up, and the wind blown drifts were hard to see.  Mike led on and we found the lake and our two fisher friends.  

Upon our arrival, augers drilled through the 8 inches of ice, water erupting upon the drills penetration.  A large spoon with holes is employed to remove the ice chunks and one then drops a lure, baited with stinky smelly sucker meat, down the hole to the bottom.  We were fishing about 20 feet down.  Then one jigs and waits.  And waits.  And waits.  Mike waited all day. 

The buzz of a fish hitting bait is an unmistakable feeling.  Sometimes the fish hits again.  Sometimes not.  

The morning stayed cold until, at last, the ice crystal fog blew off to a bluebird sky day, the sun warming our black gear.  The day turned glorious.  Benni caught a nice big fat lake trout (I canned this trout the next day).  Don kept getting hits.  I caught a pretty rainbow trout and turned it back to the black cold water through the hole.  Later, a lake trout would find my lure and be returned to the lake, none the worse for the event.  Mike kept waiting. 

Benni cooked up a hot burger for lunch.  That burger, slapped between a bun with ketchup and mustard was one of the finest lunches ever!  What a treat to be in the middle of nowhere on a cold February afternoon eating a hot burger.  

We rode around the lake, drilling holes here and there.  I learned that riding on slush isn't as frightening as it seems and none of us got stuck in the wet slopping watery snow.  The weight of the prior night's snowfall cracks the ice which causes the flood on top of the iced lake.  

We quit and packed up around 3:30pm and arrived home just at dusk after a long and full day. 

So why go ice fishing? 

To remember that you are still tough enough.  To ride a snowmachine in the early dawn light onto a lake covered in ice and be a bit terrified.  To look down into a black hole drilled in the ice and imagine fish biting your lure.  To feel the hit of a fish on your bait and then to feel the wiggle to get free.  To see the fish come out of the hole and onto the snow.  To release the fish back to her home. To eat the most delicious and memorable lunch.  To hang with friends.  To squint into the brilliant light bouncing off the dazzling snow.  To ride atop a lake covered in ice, cracked with the weight of snow, and flooded with water and not die.