More Than Two Reasons To Go Ice Fishing

Though my Flog is not going in the chronological order of my fishing experiences, I have been seeing so many posts on anglers waiting for the lakes to freeze, this story seemed fitting. The year we added ice fishing to the list of types of fishing we have tackled, pun intended : )

Pan fishing during the warmer seasons was all of our experience, on the shore at local ponds, sometimes family camping trips to new lakes and once a year to our favorite lake on a boat in the Upper Peninsula. We even added fishing to our vacations, always packing a tackle box and a couple poles just in case we found a good spot to test.

It was already obvious by this time that my middle son LOVED fishing. Our trips to the U.P. when the kids were younger took place in Ironwood visiting our family friend Mr. B. Mr. B was a friend of my parents and I grew up writing letters to him...the house in Ironwood did not have a phone, but Mr. B was a fabulous pen pal. One of the factors of being a great pen pal, is of course, replying in a timely fashion.

Matteo was about 11 or 12 and he was now writing letters to Mr. B regularly and it was in December of that year that Mr. B told my son that he had an ice shanty we could have and “have your Mom call me”. See Mr. B lived locally in Illinois during the winter months so he was close by.

I avoided making that phone call for over a month. There may have even been multiple letter exchanges and reminders for me to call about the shanty and arrange to pick it up.

All I could think was, I fish with this kid all the time, pier fishing, pond fishing, lake fishing, river fishing, morning fishing, all day fishing, evening fishing (covered in mosquitoes, another story for another Flog, just having a flashback moment)...if I picked up a shanty, he would want to go ICE FISHING!!

Well, the fishermen were not letting me off the hook, pun intended again. Mr. B called me. I am pretty sure the phone conversation went “didn’t Matteo tell you to call me, I have an ice shanty for you” to which I replied out loud, “if I have a shanty, he will want to go ice fishing!”

I picked up the ice shanty. It was this fabulously large, PVC framed structure, with a royal blue canvas, encased in a two part case that also acted as the hard base and when collapsed it could be pulled like a giant sled. We were also gifted with a hand auger. Side note: Matteo was not quite tall enough to drill and put some pressure on the top so it would make progress through the ice...so I was not only ice fishing, I was the official ice hole driller.

Well, my prediction came through. Suddenly, we were searching lakes and tracking ice thickness and dragging the giant sled/shanty across the frozen lakes. Drilling holes by hand, having to know what honeycombing meant and exchanging my jewelry for an ice pick necklace...you know those things that you wear around your neck just in case you fall through the ice...WHAT?!

I have been ice fishing before, growing up. Here is what I knew...there are two reasons men go ice fishing, to get away from their significant other and to drink beer. And yet, here I was, no beer, on the ice drilling holes, setting up tip-ups, scooping out slush, jigging and TMI WARNING keeping a container of wax worms in my cleavage because it seemed that they were a little livelier if I kept them warm (yes, I completely realize that as soon as they hit the ice water this was a moot point).

We struggled to catch anything and I was admittedly not the biggest fan of ice fishing. But then, it happened during a trip to Madison to visit our friends. We naturally dragged the fishing equipment with us. Drilling holes with the and auger from the 1950s for what seemed like 40 minutes, when just across the lake we watched a guy with this super cool popover shanty and a cordless drill auger, he was set up in like 5 minutes total. Three hours not a bite, and then the flag popped and that boy pulled up a 36” northern by hand...it almost didn’t fit through the hole.

It was the biggest fish he had ever caught, might still be for that matter. That was the day I fell in love with ice fishing. There are now three reasons that people go ice fishing...to get out of the house, to drink beer and because you are a fish Mom.