Cold Fish

To most people, the lure of ice fishing is a total mystery, even for those who like to fish in normal conditions. When most piscators have the sense to winterize their boats and put away their fishing gear for the season, ice fishermen get all excited about the sub-zero temperatures steadily thickening the ice. Ice fishing is a bizarre, perhaps neurotic, pastime filled with masochistic pleasure, as its practitioners eagerly risk frostbite while standing for hours on wind-blown ice. And yet, as I write this blog post, I am nearly trembling with excitement to get out on the ice to lower a colorful jig into the mysterious and hopefully fish-filled darkness below.

My nomadic lifestyle has presented a challenge for ice fishing. Traveling to Georgia in the winter tends to complicate matters. Ice fishing in Georgia requires a boat and a cooler filled with ice cubes. Once you get to your favorite fishing spot, you scatter some ice cubes on the water and commence fishing. An auger is entirely optional. However, lacking a boat in Georgia, I’m out of luck to access the true advantage of ice fishing, which is the ability to reach any part of the lake without the benefit of watercraft. This problematic catch-22 has driven me to schedule three weeks in the midwest during the coldest part of the year. My wife thinks we are just stretching holidays and recovering from travel, but we are facilitating one of life’s true joys, ice fishing.

I have ice fished off and on nearly my whole life, beginning with when we moved to north Idaho in the early 1960s. That area of the country is a poor place for ice fishing because the temperature often fluctuates above freezing, leaving the ice rotten and unpredictable. But some years, there would be stretches of cold weather where the ice would be sound enough for fishing. In a very early memory, my father took my brothers and me out on what must have been a large beaver pond. I remember being fascinated by the rodent gnawed, pointed sticks in the beaver den which poked above the ice. I’m still wondering how those beavers got out of the frozen pond. And even though I don’t recall catching any fish, I remember getting extremely cold before we got off the ice. I wish I’d spent more time taking my children ice fishing like that. The few times we got out, I don’t think I repeated the “kidcicle” experience for them, but I’m afraid to ask. 

Following this, my ice fishing memories come from my time in the Flathead Valley of Montana. One of my elder parishioners took on the mission of piscatorial care for me. My children called him Grandpa Roy, a title he earned in spades. He loved ice fishing and often included me in winter jaunts out to local lakes. I watch him pull piles of delectable trout through the ice. His skill was extraordinary. However, no matter how closely I observed, the ability could have been more transferable. Even when we traded holes, our catch ratio remained the same. I never did learn why he was so consistently successful. But now that I am nearing his age at that time, I’m hoping his experience will anoint my success somewhere along the way.

Roy also introduced me to fishing for what we called silvers, also known as kokanee salmon. Fishing for silvers is my most cherished ice fishing scenario. At least if there is something better, I’ve never heard of it. Flathead lake, where we went, is a massive body of water that rarely freezes solid. But the bays reliably ice over every year. Silvers patrol the lake in large schools that move in and out of the bays. As many as a hundred fishermen showed up in the early morning light at a cove along the Flathead shore and scattered out to dig holes in the ice as an act of pure faith. With everything set, an impromptu social gathering ensued while everyone was drinking coffee and chatting, with a heavy pall of expectancy hung in the air. Then, at some magical moment, tip-ups began to activate on one edge of the system of ice holes. Then we fishermen rushed like firefighters for our poles. You could watch the school of kokanee move under the ice as a successively more significant portion of the community of fishermen began to pull salmon from the depths frantically. Crazed fishing activity spread from one edge of the bay to the other for about thirty minutes until the holes went cold as the trailing salmon swam off into the distance. Then the whole group packed up their gear and drove away. It was a surreal phenomenon that I will never forget. Even though Roy’s pile of fish flopping on the ice always eclipsed mine by several orders of magnitude, I take some comfort from the fact that it was a rare hole in the entire bay that had a haul comparable to his.

Many acknowledge that the quintessential ice fishing tradition is Minnesotan, where we moved in in the early 1990s. It is tragically regrettable that while living in that state, my work at the Seminary took a turn that crowded out nearly all fishing and hunting. I could only admire the burgeoning ice villages from the roadway as they sprang ex nihilo on most of Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes. The mortgages required to build ice houses that kept up with ice fishing Joneses needed entire family fortunes. If only India were in a cooler climate, some enterprising Minnesotans would have outfitted the Taj Mahal with skids and trap doors.  

The exclusive nature of those ice-born communities was intense. No one posted “No estrogen allowed” signs, but like a wireless fence, women’s faces involuntarily seemed to twitch if they approached too close. I want to quickly add that I don’t think this situation was intentionally misogynistic. Instead, Minnesota ice fishing is culturally a gigantic outdoor man cave. However, if you believe Youtube, these distinctions have begun to break down. More and more channels have taken advantage of the irresistible attraction that combines lovely young women with fishing. However, I note that the ambient ice fishing temperatures discourage bikini-clad bodies from displaying themselves along with fish they claim to have just caught.

I did get in some ice fishing while living in Minnesota. On one occasion, my youngest son requested a fishing trip for his January birthday. On this particular trip, we splurged and reserved one of the many lovely ice houses available for rent near the Twin Cities. We went out on a particularly frigid evening under conditions that would have quickly chased us off the ice. But when we opened the door, we entered a lighted, warm indoor space with two lovely portals to the dark, wet underworld of fish. Doffing our cold weather outer garments, we tuned the ice house’s radio to the Wolves game and settled into fishing. Like the Wolves, we came up with zeros in the win column. But the novelty of room-temperature ice fishing and the father-son comradery made the outing worthy of a lifetime memory.  

Now we come to the current season, where I have successfully presented jigs to millions of imaginary fish through actual holes in the eleven or so inches of ice that currently covers bodies of water in and around Sioux Falls. My first outing revealed that my bargain basement ice auger could not put a hole through any ice that would bear my weight. My initial attempt left me prone over a minor scratch on the ice. Fortunately, a good Samaritan with a powered ice auger dropped a hole for me. Unfortunately, it left me without a good excuse for not catching fish.  

The next outing included a brand-new and upgraded hand auger. Soon after arriving at my next fishing spot, I stared breathlessly at a newly minted hole in the ice. The door to self-sufficient ice fishing was open at last. Unfortunately, it opened into a room recently vacated by all its aquatic quarry. The third outing was similar; its primary benefit was fresh air and practice putting holes in the ice. By the fourth outing, I discovered where the DNR had put all the fish as a couple of large and delicious trout found their way up through my hole. Even though I plan more fishing this winter, I have satisfied my primary goals for the season. And even Grandpa Roy may have taken notice of my success from his hole out on the ice of heaven.