Did you bring beer?

Whew! I got that out of the way. Yup, ice fishing is out of my system for another winter. Or maybe not.

I’ve been going ice fishing once a year for some years now, just to know it hasn’t changed. I normally don’t catch fish, I get bored and cold, and when I’m convinced I won’t catch fish is when I wonder why anyone thinks cold beer on a cold lake in a cold wind tastes good.

Ice fishing is not in my blood, even if lutefisk is. My parents fished in the summer only, because in our family “no such thing as safe ice” was taken way too seriously. Even when ice skating on the flooded rink in our front yard I had to tie a rope from my belly to the cottonwood tree.

But on a mild morning last week I texted my brother-in-law about something we’d been threatening since Christmas. “How about today for ice fishing?” I asked. A cold front was moving in by mid-afternoon, so we made fast plans to meet at the lake by 11 a.m. Maybe we’d catch fish before catching cold.

I stopped for waxies and teardrops—oh, you thought I’m not well-versed in ice fishing—drove to the landing and rode in bro-in-law’s Jeep to a spot hugging the west shoreline, out of the breeze. Bro’s gas-powered auger started whining and churning, thank heavens, because I really didn’t have a good plan for puncturing 18 inches of ice other than a garage sale special manual auger with a dull blade.

(When I go ice fishing alone I walk rapidly across the lake as if I know where I’m going. In reality, I have no idea, knowing only that I’m scanning for a hole already drilled but recently abandoned, a hole with only a skim of ice on it. The drawback being that I don’t catch fish in the same place someone else didn’t catch fish.)

I was fishing within 10 minutes. But by 30 minutes I was slouching on my obligatory 5-gallon pail, gazing across the ice, sometimes at the sky, fighting boredom by counting ice shacks and thinking profound thoughts. My profoundness was interrupted by my partner’s “Did you bring beer?” No.

Then suddenly, a nibble, though in my state of negative chill I figured a cruising northern pike had bumped my waxie. But then the bobber moved enough to get my hand’s attention to yank into a tiny bluegill. I threw it back down the hole. A minute later I either caught it again or its twin.

Then came more serious bites, and more serious fish starting beaming up the shaft to daylight. I tossed them on the ice next to me like I always do (or don’t). I was getting quite a collection of fryer bluegills when it all ended during a tangled line interruption and a cold-front eruption riding an emboldened wind.

Snow devils raced and chased across the flat whiteness. Clouds ran away, and so did the fish. But there were enough bluegills for supper, with a matching contribution from my bro-in-law. So you know, I might just go ice fishing again. Seems I got it into my system, not out of my system.

(Blogger’s note: Yes, I know this Outdoor Journal blog has taken a lengthy hiatus—18 months to be exact, after a 15-month run from the blog beginning in May 2020 to its pause in September 2021. As Jackson Browne wrote in his “These Days” song, “Don’t confront me with my failures, I’m aware of them.” But here’s the deal: About the time I paused I was taking on another newspaper column weekly commitment, which includes a photo with each piece. Then I got serious about a book, which has been accepted by Cornerstone Press at UW-Stevens Point, with publication scheduled later this year. The book is a collection of nature essays and outdoor stories. I hope to keep this blog up, more like once a month than the ambitious once-a-week routine it began with. This would also be a good time to note that my Up North column appears in the Friday print editions of the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram and Ashland Daily Press, and on the Ashland newspaper’s website, normally a day or two ahead of the Friday newspaper. A condensed version of the outdoor column also appears in every Wednesday edition of the Rice Lake Chronotype.)