Ice Fishing on New Years Day 2010
We awoke New Years Day to an extremely cold day. At 8 am it was 0 degrees with a wind chill factor of about 10 below. Brrr I didnt' want to go out there. But I had promised a friend that I would take her 14 year old son as he had never been ice fishing and wanted to try this hard water fishing so badly. I was worried about the extreme cold but I promised. Thankfully I had told him we were not going to go until 11 am. By that time the temperature had risen to a balmy 10 degrees. Yikes.
We picked up Nate at 11 am and he was ready to go. He had bought a new fishing rod made especially for ice fishing and had to show me all the food his mom had packed for him. I couldn't tell if it was the treats in his lunch or the rod that made him the happiest. He is a happy kid. He jabbered all the way to the lake. I could tell he was excited about this trip.
When we pulled into the parking lot at the lake Nate suddenly went quiet. I turned around and he was staring out onto the lake at all the ice shelters in the ice. His mouth was hanging open. He told me he had no idea that ice fishing was so popular. When you compare it to open water or warm weather fishing it doesn't come close to the same numbers but ice fishermen are a breed apart for sure. Just to want to go out on the hard water is amazing in and of itself.
The jabbering started right back up as soon as we got our gear ready and started to walk towards the lake. Now Nate is a big strong boy who plays football and baseball but after about 500 yards onto the ice he was getting winded. I asked him if he wanted to stop and I think he did but said no because my husband and I are in our 50's and we weren't stopping. I told him you gotta be hardy to be an ice fishermen. He was breathing a bit heavy. Walking on the ice through the snow is tough work.
Finally my husband stopped and said this was the spot. He got out the auger and started to drill some holes. Nate stood there and watched. After my husband drilled 3 holes we set up the ice shelter because by this time I was getting a bit cold. I started the heater and in about 5 minutes we had the shelter heated right up. I would say it was at least 20 to 30 degrees warmer than it was outside. Nate was shocked, he didn't think it would get that warm. We started to fish using bee moths which are some sort of larva. Bluegills love them. After about an hour we still hadn't caught anything which didn't matter to me, I have caught hundreds of fish through the ice in the 20+ years I have been ice fishing. But I wanted Nate to catch something very badly. All of a sudden his bobber went down and before you knew it Nate had a fish on the ice. Oh my was he excited. I was pleased he had caught a fish.
We stayed out there for about 4 hours and ended up catching 6 fish between the 3 of us. Could have been better, could have been worse. I was standing on the ice looking at some rods we had outside of the shelter and 2 men and a teenage boy walked by. They stopped to talk. The one man and the boy were from Arizona and this was their first trip on the hard water as well. They looked cold. All in all we had a great day. On the way home I asked Nate if he would like to try ice fishing again. I recieved a very loud YES. So now I have a new ice fishing buddy. Later that evening I went on Facebook and Nate had posted about what a great time he had. All his friends on Facebook were talking to him. I sent him the pictures I took of his first visit to the hard water. I have those pictures posted on RedGage in my Places I Have Been and my Fishing Stuff and Information Collection. Thanks for reading my story.
