FISHING ON ICE
During the long Christmas break from school, I had lots of time to do one of my favorite things: ice fishing. Fishing through the ice in winter differed from summer fishing in several profound ways, the most important being that it could be mighty uncomfortable if the temperatures hung around zero and a stiff northwest breeze wanted to paralyze everything it touched. Cold temperatures never deterred Pa from a day on the ice, though. He loved ice fishing even more than fishing in summer, probably because he could devote more time to it. Farmers had little time for fishing in the summer. But in winter, when you finished the chores and had enough firewood stacked behind the house, you could go cast your line.
In the years during and right after World War II, there were few cottages surrounding the lakes where we liked to fish. This was especially true of Mt. Morris Lake, one of our favorite wintertime haunts. Mt. Morris Lake, located near the village of Mt. Morris and a few miles east of Wild Rose, was only about a twenty-minute drive from our farm, depending on how slippery the roads were. When we arrived at the lake, we’d park the car alongside the road and gather up our equipment, which included an ice chisel, several tip-ups (a device for catching fish through the ice), a gaff hook (for yanking a monster fish through the hole), a bucket of minnows, and our lunch pails. My little brothers, Pa, and I would trudge through the snow until we reached the lake, then walk across its frozen surface, slipping and sliding and clutching our equipment, to a little spot at the edge of a woods where we could build a campfire.
In those days ice-fishing regulations allowed each of us to have two lines in the water at a time, so Pa chopped eight holes through the ice for our eight tip-ups. His ice chisel was a Model T Ford’s rear axle that he’d had Arnold Christensen, the Wild Rose blacksmith, sharpen on one end. Arnold drilled a hole through the other end, where Pa fastened a leather thong. When chopping holes in the ice, Pa made sure to keep the leather thong wrapped around his wrist—because he never knew exactly when the chisel would punch through the ice, and he didn’t want to lose it at the bottom of the frigid lake. It took Pa a while to chop all the holes; we fished for big fish—northern pike that could reach ten pounds and bigger—so he made the holes ten or twelve inches in diameter. And depending on how cold it had been so far, he would have to chop through ice that was anywhere from three inches to a foot or more thick.
When the holes were finally ready, we helped Pa set up the tip-ups. Each had a little red flag that flew up if a fish took the bait, a two-to three-inch minnow we called shiners because of their shiny sides. As we worked we discussed where we thought the big fish might be lurking, and every so often we heard a loud booming noise. “It’s the lake talking to us,” Pa said. The booming noise was caused by the ice on the lake contracting and forming long cracks. For the uninitiated, this booming and cracking could be quite unnerving, but for the experienced ice fisherman it was all part of the atmosphere.
With our tip-ups set, we walked back to the west shore of the lake to the little wooded spot where we would start our campfire. I gathered up an armful of dry oak branches, my brothers scrounged some dead grass, and within a few minutes a sliver of smoke rose from the little fire that we would keep going all day. A downed tree log provided a comfortable place to sit. My love for campfires began during those ice-fishing trips, when our fire dried our wet fingers from handling minnows and provided just enough heat to keep us comfortable.
About the time we arrived at the lake, other fishermen began appearing as well. Often one or more of my uncles came. Uncle Wilbur, Uncle Ed, and Uncle Fred all liked ice fishing, but they may have enjoyed telling and hearing stories even more. When the uncles had their tip-ups in place, they’d join us at our campfire and the storytelling would begin, about days when they were kids and how hard they worked, about times when the fish seemed to always bite and were considerably larger than anything we might catch today, about deer hunting and rabbit hunting, about fox and muskrat trapping—Uncle Ed was an excellent trapper and probably the best hunter in the group.
Most wild creatures either slow down or hibernate in winter, and so it is with fish. They move more slowly and feed less often. An ice fisherman spends far more time sitting and watching than pulling fish through the ice. But occasionally a story would be interrupted by a yell of “Tip-up!” when a flag announced a bite. Everyone ran to the tip-up to see whose it was—in this case, my Uncle Fred’s—and to survey the owner’s technique in landing (or not) a northern pike.
Pulling a northern pike through the ice is not as easy as it might appear; it requires considerable patience and experience. The first thing to determine when arriving at the ice hole with the tip-up flag flying is whether a fish is indeed on your line, or if (a) the fish snapped at the minnow and then swam off, (b) the fish successfully grabbed the minnow without becoming hooked, or (c) it was a wind-up—meaning that the wind blew up the flag and the whole thing was a false alarm. So Uncle Fred tore off his gloves, gently reached into the icy water for the fish line, and then carefully lifted the tip-up from the hole, making sure the reel holding the extra line was free to turn if more line was needed. Sometimes the simple act of lifting the tip-up from the hole sends a fish swimming rapidly away. Uncle Fred allowed the line to play through his now icy fingers as line stripped from the reel.
At this point onlookers began offering my uncle considerable advice, most of it contradictory. “Set the hook and pull him in.” “Let him have more line.” Common sense usually suggests that the northern pike has grabbed the minnow and is swimming off with it before stopping, turning the minnow around, and then swallowing it, thus becoming hooked. But nobody knows for sure if this is happening, as you can’t see what the fish is doing under the ice. Usually, after the first run, the experienced fisherman will wait for a minute or so and then gently pull on the line. If it goes limp, the fish is off. But more often, with the fisherman’s gentle pull the northern will try for a second run. This time Uncle Fred gave the line a little jerk, called setting the hook, and then he began pulling hand over hand on the cold, wet line. He must have had a fish on the line, because the pulling wasn’t easy.
As the fish approached the hole, the onlookers fell silent, all gazing at the little round opening in the ice and wondering if Uncle Fred would successfully haul out the fish. Despite the cold, beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. Not noticing how cold his hands were, he continued pulling and piling wet green fish line onto the ice, where the line froze on the spot.
“He’s almost to the hole,” Uncle Fred announced, and one of the onlookers stepped up with the gaff hook at the ready.
Then the fish appeared in the hole, almost filling it, its mouth wide open. With a quick motion, the assistant slipped the sharp hook into the big northern’s open mouth, and it flopped out of the hole with a splash and a collective gasp from the audience.
“It’s a good one,” somebody said.
“Go at least six or seven pounds,” somebody else announced.
With the hook and gaff hook removed from its mouth, the fish jumped wildly into the air, as high as a foot or so, trying to find its way back to the fish hole, where Uncle Fred stood ready to push it away if it should come too close to escaping back to the depths. When the jumping ceased, Fred pulled a small measuring tape from his pocket and, while a couple of men held the fish, he measured. Everyone watched to make sure the measurement was accurate—no adding an inch or two.
“Thirty inches,” Uncle Fred reported, a big smile spreading across his face.
“Good fish,” a grizzled old fisherman from the crowd said. “Good fish,” he said again, patting Uncle Fred on the shoulder.
The crowd dispersed. With the gaff hook, Uncle Fred carried his prize toward our campfire. He stopped at the edge of the lake, where he chopped an indentation in the ice long enough to accommodate the fish. In one corner of the indentation he punched all the way through the ice to water, which immediately filled the hollowed-out spot. He placed his big fish in the hollow, where it would remain alive until he headed home later in the afternoon.
Only then did Uncle Fred return to the campfire to warm his cold hands and report exactly how he landed this big fish, from the time the tip-up flew up until the northern flopped on the ice. The story would join the repertoire of ice-fishing stories to be shared again and again, each year the fish growing a bit in length, the process of landing the creature becoming ever more challenging.
At noon we opened our lunch buckets and took out our cold sandwiches. Pa whittled a fork from a little oak limb, and we used it to toast our sandwiches over the campfire. The wood smoke added a wonderful flavor to my cheese sandwich as I sat munching and looking out over the lake toward my motionless tip-ups.
Later in the day one of my brothers caught a twenty-inch northern, and then Pa caught one about the same size. But it was Uncle Fred’s big fish that made it a day I would never forget. It was a good day—but then, every day spent ice fishing is a good day, especially when the storytellers are present.
Pa and Ma made our first catch of the season into pickled fish. Here is Ma’s recipe.
Clean the fish and cut it into small pieces.
Cover the fish pieces in salt water and soak
for 24 hours (1 cup of salt to 1 quart of water).
Drain the fish and then soak in white vinegar
for 24 hours. Drain again, saving the vinegar
for brine.
In a large pot, combine fish, 2 cups of reserved
vinegar with 2 cups water, 1 cup sugar, and a
handful of pickling spice.
Bring to a boil. Turn fish after about a minute.
Bring to a boil again and then put the fish and
brine mixture in jars, add a slice of onion,
and seal. The pickled fish will be ready to
eat in 24 hours.