Ice Fishing

As a 10-year-old, I remember how special it was to be excused from school to go ice fishing on Lake Mille Lacs. We stayed in a resort that rented icehouses! The frozen foreign lake emerged. A whiteness of ice stretched out forever, only to be punctuated by distinct color squares with tin chimneys protruding from roofs. Usually gray or brown, sometimes these icehouses were red or blue.

In the 1960s, snowmobiles were a novelty. Resort snowmobiles carried our family to “our” icehouse. We had no choice but to trust this noisy, smelly machine as it screamed over ice we hoped was strong enough to hold us. We weighed more with the big parkas, lined boots, choppers, and even one-piece snowmobile suits to ward off the cold. Goggles separated us from the wind.

No icehouse door opened without complaints from the door hinge. Inside, a dark interior the size of a living room changed magically once the kerosene lantern was lit. Enough light to see a wooden table with four chairs, peeling white paint from their straight ladder backs. A small window—over the table—revealed natural light. A brown propane heater provided enough warmth to fish comfortably in our shirts and pants. But sometimes we overheated, so we propped open the icehouse door for some cold air. Our eyes hurt as they adjusted to the bright white bleakness. Eventually, we closed the door, and began the cycle again.

In each corner, a toilet-bowl-sized hole had been drilled. Looking down, we could see a translucent gray-green water—never any fish or lake bottom. A dark fishing line was suspended over each hole with a playing card tied to it as a bobber. We watched that card in case a fish nibbled on the hook. There were no fishing poles. All we had to do was lower a pale minnow on a hook to the icy depths—probably never to be seen again.

At least we had serious board game competition. Monopoly, Scrabble and Parcheesi had come with us on the snowmobile. While I don’t remember who won, I recall losing our colored die down the fishing hole. It rolled off the table onto the green indoor/outdoor carpeting (carefully cut at right angles around each hole) and into the icy water. Unless a large fish swallowed it and then we caught the fish, it was gone. We found another die in another game. When we kids hadn’t won nor caught any fish, which was most of the time, we could always bundle up and run outside into the cold. Not much to do except make snow angels if the snow was soft. We made flocks all around the icehouse.

We ate the resort’s bag lunches. From our small red-and-white cooler, we added our favorite foods. It was risky to drink liquids, without bathrooms in the icehouse. Boys knew what to do, but girls waited for the snowmobile and prayed for a ride without bumps on the way back to the resort.

Ice fishing had its own subculture. Who would bundle up warmly and jump on a loud machine to reach a small, dark, unmarked shack and sit for hours waiting for a fish to bite? I don’t remember catching any fish that we kept and ate. It was the process, the experience—so different from our daily life—that kept us returning each year.