Does this, Mark asked, holding up the gleaming, olive-and-maroon-flanked, darkly spotted trout, make the discomfort worthwhile, or what? And people wonder why anybody ice fishes. Yes, they do. As a matter of fact, I was one of those people at one time. Of all God's creations, the enigmatic, masochistic, obsessed individuals known as ice fishermen may be the strangest. They are accused, perhaps justifiably, of being a couple eggs short of an intellectual omelet. These eccentrics start quivering with anticipation when the late-fall, overnight temperatures dip below fifteen degrees. A prolonged, zero to subzero spell, from their perspective, is cause for jubilant celebration.
Ice fishermen—God love 'em. Their wives and children and non-ice-fishing friends do, too, but only from safe distances when the lake surfaces freeze. They are not necessarily welcomed with open arms when they stagger home with a sackful of trout or still-flopping perch and a suspicious hint of schnapps on their breath. Tolerantly, ice fishermen look upon these assorted noncombatants as summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. They accept it when these jelly-backboned bystanders disdain to partake in the smelly, slippery business of filleting orange-meat trout or white-meat perch but somehow magically appear at the dinner table when the finished product is presented. These non-ice-fishermen gladly help you dispose of a platter of fried fillets, but they wouldn't walk out onto a frozen lake to watch Ann-Margret ice fish in a bikini. (Hell, I'd crawl out there if I had to.) Or if they do walk out there, it's just to get a closer look at these perverted characters. To them, ice fishing is a spectator sport, and it's okay to leave at halftime.
Suffice it to say that the lure and lore of ice fishing is lost on some folks, including a lot of them who fish avidly at warmer times of the year. There is this persistent perception, even among other fishermen, that ice fishing is just some let's-get-out-of-the-house ritual during which everybody stands or sits around waiting for a flag to pop up or somebody to pass the brandy flask. The idea that it can involve specialized light tackle and tactics and actually result in the catching of a lot of fish is not universally embraced.
But in the colder climes—particularly in the western states, where light-tackle ice fishing is a relatively new phenomenon—the hard-water clan grows by leaps and bounds, and tip-ups aren't the equipment of choice. (In fact, a tip-up spread may be illegal—typically, in western states, having more than two lines in the water is against regulations.) This surge is propelled by the revelation that you actually can catch fish this way if you take the same sort of thoughtful, scientific approach to it that you do when standing in your favorite trout stream and contriving to match the hatch.
© Article copyright Pruett Publishing
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