A lot of people think that South Dakota's in the arctic circle, and this January (every January!) I tended to agree. The temperature, for those of you who chickened out and went south, sank to levels that broke all records since the last Ice Age, although after four days of highs at ten below zero I can state confidently that the Ice Age was warmer.
Severe weather strongly affects people, and there was a lot of grumbling, cursing, panic and depression. But then I turned to more constructive outlets. Besides making huge vats of soup, I organized unofficial parties of scouts to keep an eye out for ice monsters. I was concerned about woolly mammoths, too, but after all, they were large, clumsy beasts that probably made a lot of noise as they crunched through ice, snow, and the supermarket parking lot. My private bet is that you can always get away from a woolly mammoth. Ice monsters, however, are sneaky, creeping silently to envelop whole villages in their icy claws. So I asked the local ice fishermen to keep an eye out for them, and they agreed. Though they probably wouldn't notice if a woolly mammoth came up and sat down beside them, other than to wonder why Jim smells kind of funny.This is because ice fishermen are crazy. It's one of the requirements, probably right there in the fishing license, in the small print along with this year's limit. "Must be over 18, a resident of South Dakota, willing to sink brand-new two-ton four-wheel-drive vehicle in the lake for two fish under six inches, and/or risk frostbite to all important bodily extremities in pursuit of the same." AND THEY ARE.
The central reality of ice fishing is ice. Now to most of us, ice is something we either put in our drinks or slip on and bust our fannies. But to the ice fisherman, as to the Eskimo, there are innumerable grades and variations of ice, from "frozen solid" to "Just drive on out, she'll be fine." Their problem is in telling the difference, especially if they're driving someone else's car.
This is why he wouldn't notice a woolly mammoth if it came up and sat on him. It also - FUTURE MYSTERY WRITER ALERT - makes him a perfect target for murder. Except that the problem is that no one would be able to tell that he was dead until he didn't show up for dinner, and even then they might not look for him. (Ice fishermen are not always the most notable dinner companions.)
But you put this same shy, retiring man into a vehicle, preferably a big pick-up with a few concrete blocks in the back, and that meditative state goes flying out the window right along with his brain. Suddenly he's zipping up one end of the lake and down the other, doing figure eights and "controlled spins" (it's controlled as long as the truck doesn't flip). Any slush (with, hopefully, ice under it) simply means a larger, better spray as he does a perfect 360 degree circle. If he can scare some roosting ice fishermen, well, they needed to get their circulation going anyway. And no one is more surprised than he when that last whoosh of spray comes from his front end going through the ice.
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| And you thought I was kidding! http://justgofishin.net/ice-fishing/ |
"But it was frozen solid when I went by on my way to work!" he explains, ignoring the fact that he went by three days ago. Since then there has been a major thaw, and the ice is now a series of little ice floes with water running around them.
I once saw a pick-up actually sitting on an ice floe. It was large and new and expensive. The driver was in the cab, staring out at the landscape while the motor idled, and the exhaust shrinking the floe as he smoked a cigarette. What I couldn't figure out was how he got out there in the first place. He had to have gone out the night before, when there was still a thin skin of ice on the water. Planning, of course, to get an early start. (Fishermen always want to get an early start, which is why they're always back so late.)
"You'd better just try to wade, I mean, walk your way out!" I yelled across at him.
He looked around and shook his head. "Nah, I can just drive on out, she'll be fine." He backed the truck up a little, and then gunned it. Icy slush flew up and sprayed everything, including the required roosting ice fishermen. The ice floe shook, dissolved, and the truck was hidden by walls of water and ice to where I couldn't look any more. When I finally peeked, he was wading out of the lake.
He stared back at his truck and said, "Lake was frozen solid when I saw it on my way to work Tuesday.""It's Thursday," I pointed out.
He shook his head in disbelief. Then he grinned. "At least I'm bringing home dinner," he crowed, holding up two six-inch fish.
Like I said, ice fishermen are crazy.
Great piece, Eve. Fun. And now I know more about ice fishing than I ever thought I would and the possibility of a good murder story too!
ReplyDeleteLucky your crazy people have a sense of humor!
ReplyDeleteCool article (ha). I went ice fishing in the Arctic once. Didn't even need bait. The fish were so hungry, they bit the empty hook. I felt sorry for them. Gotta admit, I still ate them at the fish fry.
ReplyDeleteYour piece brought back many memories, not of ice fishing but of South Dakota. I lived in Sioux Falls for eleven years. I was no stranger to harsh winters--I grew up in Buffalo--but South Dakota winters made Buffalo winters seem tropical by comparison. There wasn't as much snow, but the temperatures were much lower, and the icy wind made even a few minutes outside punishing. And the winters lasted so long! We sometimes got our first snow in October and our last in May. I live in Virginia now, and I'll admit I'm spoiled. Reading your post is about as close as I ever want to come to experiencing a South Dakota winter again.
ReplyDeleteYou gotta love ice fishermen. They were America's first line of defense when that four-engine pot plane from Colombia landed in a wheat stubble field on the west side of the Missouri River in mid South Dakota on the night of Super Bowl Sunday 1980. Those fellows were the ones who let the air out of the front tire so the plane couldn't leave, and then called the local sheriff. We later determined that the airplane had flown over the U.S. border at Texas, then flew over the SAC base at Omaha before meeting its landing crew in the wheat stubble field. That was probably the biggest catch of their life.
ReplyDeleteWhat a story, R.T.! Great! B.K., I had no idea you lived in SD. As for desperate winter fish, Melissa, you should see pheasant. They are the dumbest birds - the hilarity of all these hunters in full (jungle!) camouflage gear (and cowboy boots) going through the corn fields to hunt birds that will literally jump into your car when they're filling their crop by the side of the road... I've often said that half the pheasant kill is from birds who dropped over laughing themselves to death.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the story! Here in Canaduffalo, I don't know of any ice fishermen, but we do have a gang of idiots called the "Polar Bear Club" who go swimming in the winter.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the laugh, Eve. Whenever the subject of ice fishermen comes up, (roughly once in a millenium), I think of "Grumpy Old Men". Fun movie, a probably pretty close to the truth.
ReplyDeleteHerschel, "Grumpy Old Men" is right on the money except for one thing: those kind of ice fishing cities are only up in Minnesota, not South Dakota.
ReplyDeleteI'm a desert rat, and fishing is not my forte. So, it always seemed to me that ice fishing and flagpole sitting had quite a bit in common . . . except that flagpole sitting might be the more comfortable activity.
ReplyDeleteWhichever really IS more comfortable: unless you counted water-logged sticks and old tires, I'm sure I'd land the same number of fish from either endeavor.
Uff-da! Ice fishermen go home for dinner? Who knew?
ReplyDeleteI never went ice fishing in Minnesota, although I’m familiar with the disease. One spring, a Minneapolis newspaper cartoonist (Guindon) drew several Minnesotans standing around the last dirty pile of snow… holding out their palms to soak in the last of that soothing temperature.
During the Wall Street collapse, a bank foreclosed on a yacht. Being well-heeled and living off their customers, they thought it would make a great perq for their executives but they thought it needed a deck house to accommodate more guests and hookers… er, hook-line-and-sinkers. Thus, they commissioned a fine woodworker and cabinet maker in rural Sherburne County to build them a fancy deckhouse.
When finished, he called the bank to arrange truck transportation to the shipyard and the bank gave him bad news. It seemed with government bailouts and people losing their homes, it wouldn’t be wise floating up and down the Mississippi with cocktails in hand while the hungry 99% looked on. They cancelled the order.
Here’s our cabinet maker, surrounded by rivers and lakes– the nearest town is named Big Lake– with a deck cabin on his hands. But hey, he’s from the frozen north. He turned it into an ice fishing house, the fanciest house anyone had ever seen, complete with cabinetry and retrofitted bunks. Eat your cold, cold hearts out, bankers.
By the way, for bizarre reasons, I ended up with a snowmobile in my garage– you know, my garage in Orlando. That's in Florida. Where snow accumulation typically is… zero. But the spirit lives on. A guy asked to buy it from me. He explained he wanted to use it for marsh flats racing. It seems snowmobiles can be adapted to skim across the ocean flats. Snowmobiles even have little skis on the front! I plucked the proffered bill from his hand before he changed his mind. Ride ’em, cowboy!