Ice fishing

It’s that time of the year to start the stew, and let it warm up as you enjoy the warm tent indoors. The stew is the unlimited food for our unlimited time of spending time on ice. We would get in a group of five or more tents and share the stew in the middle of the five or so tents encircling it. We catch crappies all day and for a bonus, we’d come across some nice walleyes. It would be an exhilarating encounter if we ever come across some monster muskies with our only tiny two foot long ice fishing rods. It’s not unheard of, but we also heard of guys catching lots of nice 15-16 inch crappies all day at MacBride. It would be a dream to have those days, but it would be awesome if we ever get to get these monstrous 18 inch crappies, which would be a wall hanger for my room.

This year, my friend and I plan on making a homemade ice-fishing tent that would be six by seven ft. wide, and it would only cost us less than 40 dollars. That is money being saved right there, we would have more room than an ice fishing tent worth 200 dollars. The only thing we need now is “slammers” which is basically a wooden plank that would shoot the flag up if there’s a fish on, jigs, and more jigs. We would also need wax worms for bluegills and minnows for the hungry crappies and some walleyes. We would need a giant chub “minnow” for monster muskies that would bother to eat them, and they are not just the muskies you get in the summer, they packed on pounds to survive the winter, so they have a unique one of a kind, one season only, body. So if we do get one that is over 50 inches, it’s a wall hanger, otherwise in the summer it has to be over 55 inches.

We focus on the safety part; however, lots of ice fishermen die each year, by carbon monoxide, ice breaks, and freezing to death. We use propane heaters that would not produce carbon monoxide for us to breathe in. We also have our ice fishing tents and some extra warm gear if it gets less than 32 degrees, if it’s above 32 degrees, we’d be able to survive for days outside if you have sufficient sums of carbs in your body. Lots of people fuss out when it’s cold, only because their mentality isn’t that all great when they only focus on being warm. We’re also trained to tell how thick the ice is just by looking at the frozen lake. We can also tell how the ice is “rotten”, even if it’s a half a foot of ice; we can still break right through it, because it’s like Swiss cheese.

We really want it to freeze, not only to ice fish, but to get access to warm flowing parts of the lake, so we can safely get all the fish right under our tent as it is only vertical fishing technique possible. I want at least a foot of ice in the lakes, so I can get to the warm flowing parts of the water, which may only be 4 inches, but it’s still safe. This is the time of the year, early winter, to locate where the warm spots are as we observe ice and no ice, the spots where there is no ice would be the “hot” spot for fishing, and it should be easy to remember, hot means warm spot full of fish. We need the freeze now!