Ice Fishing Memories

Ice Fishing Memories

Ice Fishing in Northern Minnesota is quite a sport.

As a youngster, I remember long hours in the fish house with my father.  Each season, he would haul the "outdoor toilet" looking shack out on the ice, chisel a hole in the ice about four feet square and push the "fish house" over the hole where it would sit until spring.

He had a fake minnow on a line suspended from the ceiling and down in the water.  He made the minnow from tin, and it had movable fins that he could twist, so that when he tugged up on the line, the minnow would wiggle and turn like an injured fish.

When a fish came slowly in to investigate the newcomer, he would ease his three-tined spear into the water without a ripple.  Since it was kept dark in the house, the fish could not see us, and at the appropriate movement, he would plunge the spear into the fish and haul it inside.

One day, we were watching this fish nose as it slowly approached the minnow and Dad was just about to let loose when the fish suddenly grew larger, and larger until it filled the entire hole and just kept on floating through like a commuter train.

It turned out to be a giant sturgeon, and we were both very glad he had not loosed the spear, as the spear was attached by a rope to the ceiling and it would have torn the fish house to pieces.