Drilling through 29 inches of instinct and ice

1 - Across the snow and ice I walk, listening to the lake, imagining the depth contours below, how the fish will swim along this shoreline. Down there lives a beast I seek. Often I look for animal tracks on the surface. Where are you going, wild things? But really I wonder: Where I am going?

2 - There is something invisible in this world that reveals the perfect place for a fishing hole. This force gives my instincts mass. I read an article about a similar mysterious force, the Higgs boson, "an elusive, missing snowflake in our theory of falling snow."*

3 - Looking at a frozen lake blanketed you cannot see a single particular snowflake, or a single molecule of ice. This is impossible for the human eye. But there they are, millions and millions, together a soft quilt across a hard sheet of ice, a barrier between me and them.

4 - My skin perceives the snowfield as it fluctuates and breaks back into singular flakes, shimmering between the sky above and the water below. Eventually I am satisfied and stop my feet, drop the drill from my shoulder, right hand on top pressing down, left hand the engine, driving the blades round and round. This is something I've done thousands of times before.

5 - However: This is the end of February on a big lake. Two feet of snow on top, twenty feet of water below, the ice membrane a deep and strong field in between.

6 - The blades of the drill must be sharp at the perfect angle, creating the perfect friction. It would be a mistake pushing too hard or turning too fast. Great force in short bursts works better. One violent turn of the handle at a time, a steady rhythm, and for each turn I am one inch closer to the fish.

7 - The first few spins are effortless, the blades of the drill just getting teeth into the ice field. The arms whir with youthful electricity.

8 - Five inches down, life is easy. Ten inches down, the hands are still lively. Fifteen inches down, ice particles start grabbing at the blades... And then they grab at the arms, and then the shoulders, and the feet. Friction spreads quickly through the body, soon the lungs and guts start burning, then they howl. It's odd, to a person watching on shore this must seem like nothing at all. Such a stationary and simple thing shouldn't be so hard, but it is. Vision narrows with primal determination: Keep going, keep going. Sixteen inches, seventeen inches...

9 - The muscles become looser, but heavier. The mind must be quiet, but aggressive. Energies increasing against resistance. All of these competing forces pushing towards a breaking point. How much further to liquid water? Can I turn the handle one more time? Three more times? A thousand more times? What is my limit?

10 - When I was 18 I got my first job in the boundary waters. I had never been up here before that. I've been wondering ever since why I sought that job, how it all came to be, that first step in the right direction. Some invisible force, perhaps, something I will never really understand. On my nineteenth birthday I got drunk and watched the northern lights at the end of an old dock. And after you've seen that, what is there to understand?

11 - Then a few weeks later I moved back south.

12 - It seems to me that everyone is just looking for their place in this world. Part of me is upset I didn't see mine right away. Maybe I just couldn't comprehend it. I guess I was stuck in an in-between, I wasn't air anymore but I wasn't quite water.

13 - Twenty inches and the top of the auger blades begin disappearing into the lake's frozen skin, the teeth so far away... At this point each turn of the handle requires a steep increase in energy. A reckoning. The ice and snow fight back now, but I get meaner.

14 - Twenty-one inches, twenty three, twenty five... Managing a small newspaper in the city, married, bought a cute house with hardwood floors. We adopted two kittens, planted lilacs and tomatoes in the yard.

15 - Drilling a hole through deep ice requires great energy but so often that energy is wasted, it seems. Nothing substantial is caught there. It was not the right place. Or maybe, the right time.

16 - Thing is: I'm stubborn. Twenty six, twenty seven... I get what I want. I won't ever stop looking, twenty eight...

17 - The reason I'm always yearning, why I'm grinding ice to slush, is that I'm demanding of myself. I can't take naps. I never get sick. But there is a sickness, this constant cold desire, never satisfied. And I try so hard for optimism, but this world makes it so difficult.

18 - Is the lake even down there anymore? Has it frozen solid? How many turns of the handle has it been now?

19 - My teeth grind and jawbones clench, twenty eight, twenty eight, I'm seeing red... 

20 - As has happened so often in this life the doubt creeps in. Maybe the whole world is an icy heart. Maybe I'll never catch another beast.

21 - My arms are dead, my lungs are empty, my mind goes blank, twenty eight, twenty eight... The last grinding punch is the most difficult as the bottom gives out, but then everything breaks free and the blades taste the lake again, the barrier between us has been obliterated. Every single cell in my body howls with happiness. And there is excitement in this new possibility. Maybe, just maybe, this is the place.

22 - Seeing wild liquid water in the winter always electrifies me. I place my bare hand in the lake and splash it on my forehead, and instantly feel better. I snap back into myself.

23 - Then I realized something I already knew: No energy is ever wasted.

24 - Energy is mass.**

25  - All the hard work, the mistakes and successes, the tired muscles and happiness, each and every infintismal moment big and small, snowflakes falling on a frozen lake, piling up, there is the origin of instinct. What happened drives us to what will happen. These are the animal tracks in the snow.

26 - In my twenty-ninth year I said goodbye to the city and the girl I loved and I moved up north again, to the Gunflint Trail. Some invisible force brought me back here, something I will never understand.

27 - I breathe deeply and bait the hook, always hopeful. Watching the minnow drift down through the ice field into the vast darkness, I know something it does not, but I still know very little.

28 - Farewell, little one, bring me back a big one. It's an old trick, knocking a hole in the ice for water and meat.

29 - And I want that meat badly, I'm so thirsty for cold water, but I want nothing more than this: A permanent life in these boundary waters that have given me everything and energy and mass.

* - "Chasing the Higgs," New York Times, March 5, 2013

** - E=MC2

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An elusive lake

There is an elusive lake filled with trout, says Ed. I read about it in a Sam Cook column. He never found it but we should. It's just loaded with lakers. 

This conversation I file under "future adventures." A few weeks later I am still thinking about it. The difficulty only increases the desire.

There are two reasonable options into this lake. One is shorter but requires more bush-whacking. The second is a longer hike but the trail passes nearby. Looking over my F13 Fisher park-map in the out-house I visualize the approach up the frozen creek. A small space heater roasts my right thigh, and I burn the course into my gps.

The Packers lose miserably on Saturday night... and we move from early ice to the mid-season. On Sunday we watch more football and play cards, we feast solemnly on slow-roasted beef.

Monday rises cold and quickly. Too quickly. After breakfast KB and I lazily gather gear, sip on coffee and watch the sun hit high noon. No urgency. But at one there is an itch, let's go blaze this trail, let's go find the lonely lake. It's too late in the day and too cold, but we go anyways.

Should be three miles in, or maybe three and a half. Wonder what this path used to be? Somebody's old drive-way, some dreamer. Something goofy with almost anyone that would live up here. Someone cut this path and the trees try and erase it. It feels level but the whole way we're going downhill, deep into the park. 

A helicopter flies over, are they counting moose? Are they watching us? We take a few wrong turns. Sections of the trail are so overgrown we are crawling on our bellies. In a cluster of birch sits the metal remains of an old buggy, rusty and haunted. And then we reach the valley, where even in winter the water keeps running north. 

The trail levels out and when it turns back north my gps grows wary. Turn right. Turn right! An organ starts playing in my thorax, somewhere in my guts a bass drum starts kicking. It's over there, I can feel the gravity. Off the trail the snow gets deep but we bounce through the marshlands and tall grass poking through the snow.

And then the landscape opens up. And there it is, the elusive lake. Off a deep point I punch four holes and set the traps. We snuggle against the shoreline out of the wind, chewing frozen granola bars. 

This is fun, but this is crazy. And our eyes say:

This is ourrrr lake!

Yesss it is!

But we've left ourselves too small a window here, and lacking live bait, we fish for just one-half-hour, unsuccessfully, then point sore legs uphill, into the wind. 

We cross the creek, meander along the valley of the marsh gawking at the rock-cliffs, up to the west, across the secondary creek, up and up and up, and under the fallen trees. But I don't remember that tree. Or that one. Then: there's the old buggy. And: look at the size of that cedar! 

We reach the truck in the blue of night light dissolving into blackness. And now we know the way. It is so burned into our thighs. And another day we shall return, but today, oh today so hungry, we are done.

Lure thrown in tree

Rushing water pushes against my stomach as my feet sink into impossible muck, and I grip with my toes and lean carefully back towards the shoreline, balancing right on the edge, trying to hug the inside corner while remaining upright - and most importantly - perfectly quiet. Reading the banks and the water, always inching forward. At once, I am an animal and invisible.

At least that's the idea.

This is not A River Runs Through It. This isn't the idealized postcard of troutfishing, it's more of a struggle. I don't even own a fly rod. For the most part, Wisconsin's trout streams are narrow and choked with overhanging branches of all sorts. Just reaching them is a challenge sometimes. People do fly fish but I don't understand how, aside from the country club waters in the driftless. I prefer a more direct approach.

As I balance on the steep and squishy bank I see a clear window into a good hiding spot - maybe a foot squared, 25 feet up on the right. I flip the bail on the reel and avoid limbs above and behind me before bombing my Rapala towards the target. And it's not close. Snapping back on the rod tip I narrowly avoid a Lure Thrown In Tree (LTIT), splashing the middle of the deep run and shattering my invisibility. Shit, I mutter to myself.

Waist-deep in the stream everything is a balancing act.

We score LTITs just like we score Fish Caught and Fish Missed. It's a good way to measure your success and efficiency. And it's fun to give your buddy a hard time when he wraps a lure in the top deck of a tree. Hey, take it easy! You're spooking the fish! But an LTIT isn't so bad. It shows you are pushing yourself. You can catch fish with safe casts, but the difference between an expensive lure in a branch and lure that gets crushed by a hippo brown trout is usually a matter of inches one way or the other. And I hate losing lures, but I keep aiming for impossible windows around every corner.

After the first few pools I tune into the wind and my hands calm down. I take one more imperceptible step and the next cast reveals itself. I visualize the path, a side-armed snap, the lure flying six inches above the water, skidding perfectly under the branches and landing an inch from shore. I let go and time slows. My breath jumps and my guts feel an electric jolt, eyes narrow to a perfect focus. Splash. Before I complete one turn of the handle the fish attacks...

And then I attack. The trees clear out and there are two animals in the rushing water, taking risks and seeking rewards.

-30-

Driftless

It was just too nice out so I grabbed the tent and my fishing gear and sped southwest into The Driftless, that old glacier-free pocket of Wisconsin where valleys outnumber towns. Ryan and his doggie met me in Richland County and we built a big bonfire next to a stream and a weathered rockwall. The coyotes yipped and barked at the crescent moon. We enjoyed some whiskey, and after midnight a dense fog moved in... Tiny twinkling stars of water vapor drifted in front of our headlamps and then - it seemed - through us. The coyotes screamed, closer now. We marveled at all of this. Pretty lucky, we concluded, to be here and now...
We spent most of the next day wading up blue ribbon trout streams, beneath scattered clouds and perfect spring lighting.

Sometimes the general scenery out there is so stunning that I find myself missing the fine detail, but the fine detail is what makes a perfect moment. I'd catch a gorgeous trout but be so consumed with getting a good picture that I'd never actually look at the living fish.
I realized I had not been fully present in the moment.
Sometime before noon Ryan put a perfect cast above a deep and menacing root system in the strong middle of a big bend, and we saw a bright flash, and Ryan made a strange noise that told me it was a big fish. The brown trout was 18 inches, his biggest so far. There was no world beyond that bend of rushing spring water, and we burned the fish into memory, and watched it swim away.

I was driftless for two days and nothing beyond where I was standing in the stream mattered. I was quieted. I let the fire die down on Sunday night and climbed in my sleeping bag. Something woke me at 5:30 and I saw the fire burning brightly. Strange, I thought. I rubbed my eyes and expected to see a coyote stoking the coals. I went back to sleep.
On Monday morning we woke to cold rain so we packed up camp and headed for home, where glaciers had made room for more people, and pretty quickly I began thinking about what I would do tomorrow, and next week. And what was happening elsewhere... And should I make tacos tonight? What about all the things I need to get done in April? ... And what if, what if?
-30-

Snowmelt into the stream

It's been a dry winter and the Town of Mecan finally got a reasonable snowfall on Friday, maybe five inches of snowman snow. Deensie showed up right before whiteout conditions set in and we went out ice fishing for the final time of the season... We couldn't see the shore in any direction but I got a pike and Deen got a catfish so we had to celebrate the successful end of a successful campaign. Old-fashioneds all around! And that was the end of our winter.
The next morning we got up early for stream trout catch-and-release season opener. Deen's wife Stacey and my buddy Ryan joined us on my favorite stream up north of Puckaway and we stepped into the cold waters from snowy banks. The terrain was a frightening contrast of seasons. Trees heavy with snow drooped their branches into the deep bends, the sky and forest were light and the stream fast and dark. The air warmed and the snow slowly melted from this odd world. Upstream we snuck against gravity and clear current, zipping rapalas into small windows close to cover where montrous browns lay hiding:
Here it comes back to me just watch for the quick flashes that flood my eyes with adreneline, wait for the weight and the wiggling beautiful fish... There! There!

On Monday it was warmer still and me and Deen came back. The valley was a different place. Most of the snow was gone and the fantastic crisp white was replaced by infinite shades of brown. Even the stream seemed brown, full of the snowmelt and sediments. The trout didn't really mind though. Neither did we. It was good to get off the ice and chuck a lure around again.
I was so sore when we got back home, even my toes were shot from squishing through the muck and stumbling over grapefruit rocks, but it was a satisfying sore. In stream wading I had used every muscle on my frame quietly, against quiet resistance, the constant murmur of water rolling downhill. I felt like I feel after yoga in the morning. Tired but light. Like water resisting gravity. Bouncey.
How is it that burning fuel creates more energy? What would happen if I performed Warrior 3 in a set of rolling spring rapids? Yoga and trout fishing, two new things in my life, and how did I ever really appreciate springtime before? Awaking from deep sleep? The streams all swell and I stand there, quietly, breathing and watching the snow melt... I adjust my feet and exhale, find my target between two trees dipping into the current, factor in the wind and place my rapala an inch from the undercut bank. My breath catches for a split second before I turn the handle.
Flash! There! It all happens so quickly.

I can't blame the trout for feasting... If a lure were to land close to my cover I would snap hungrily, too. That is what we do.
-30-

Cold North Dakota Hot

My good friends Tyler and Mary have been living in North Dakota for several years now and I had been planning on visiting them via the Amtrak 'Perch Express' the entire time. And the Winter of 2012 allowed me the opportunity to follow through on that, so I did. On February 8 I boarded the Empire Builder in Tomah, and after twelve hours of drinking smuggled wine and reading and a quick nap, I arrived in Devils Lake, North Dakota. Ty was waiting for me in the pre-dawn darkness, truck idling. The Prairie.  I was wide awake and hungry.

We went out for breakfast, where I got the 'Cedar Sausage Breakfast' (which is one big sausage the size of a large brat, delicious, dippy eggs and potatoes, coffee and toast) - a good start to the trip. "This whole part of town is below the lake," Ty said as we drove to get bait, pointing out the 'lake level' markers on the street light poles, 12 to 15 feet off the ground. Huh. Devils Lake is filling up like a clogged bathtub, and when the water reaches the edge, they simply build a new levy and move the shoreline back. They can't let out as much as they are taking in, otherwise Fargo would flood downstream. So the shoreline of this lake is very odd... Roads just disappear into the lake... Old farms are now surrounded by ice and fishermen. Sunken timber from the old shoreline is found throughout the lake. This is all happening on a super-massive scale. Devils Lake is already well over 100,000 acres and it's growing every year, and from what Ty tells me, they don't really have a long-term plan. I was unsettled by this, just as I was unsettled to see lakes six feet below usual levels up north of Ely in October. On the one hand, I like things that cannot be tamed, but I don't like seeing big trees and street signs sticking out of the ice and I don't like seeing rocks exposed that have been submerged for centuries. For as much as I enjoy fishing and exploring waterways, I guess I'm uneasy about depths in the same way I am about gravity.

We had three full days of fishing until my return train's scheduled departure, and the first morning served up the best weather of the trip. The temperatures were mild by North Dakota February standards, and the wind was calm. But an hour after setting up camp the wind howled and the clouds moved in... some flurries appeared... the thermometer dropped into the single digits and exposed fingers quickly froze solid. Days two and three were sunny, but ultimately, even colder. Both of my big trips out of state this winter have reminded me what a real winter should feel like and I believe there is something inherently good in confronting frostbite.

I expected North Dakota to be more desolate, flatter, but in many ways it reminded me of large portions of Wisconsin - big snow-dusted fields rowed with scrub trees covered with the subtle pink light of winter, the deer are like our deer, the people, too. Other than the wind-chill and the insane size of the lake, the other main differences in the fishing is you get four lines per person, which is the most I've found. However, they don't allow any big live bait. If you want something bigger than a fathead, you must deploy deadbait, and in this role we cast Blue Herring from Puget Sound. This required some tweaks in rigs and strategy, but overall the pike seemed happy with our offerings. Also, the lake's food chain is all built around these tiny freshwater shrimp, which is why the famous Devils Lake perch get so fat. Which is also why the pike get so monstrous. Most tourist fishermen who visit Los Diablos (as I was calling it for some reason) chase these 'jumbo perch' but it's no secret I am only interested in the biggest fish in the lake so we basically set out as many big blue herring as possible the entire weekend, with one rod dedicated to jigging in the shanty.

Day two was pretty slow fishing and we only managed one fish iced with a few more nice pike lost to underwater snags (likely timber). Ty had something gigantic on that ran into some sort of tangle-den, so even the slow day had exciting moments. The first and third days, on the other hand, were simply excellent. We had lots of action despite the cold and the fish were all fat and healthy. Around noon on Saturday I was jigging a minnow head on a spoon and I caught a decent pike, the first one I ever caught jigging, and I screamed the entire time I was reeling it up (I usually don't have the patience for this tactic).

The highlight of the trip happened at the end of the first day, when we each caught our best fish of the year within a five minute window. Both pike were truly trophy fish, but the way we caught them made this a truly memorable five minutes. We had one hole that had already caught a few fish, and about a half hour after I caught a nice 30-incher nearby, that 'hot hole' went up and Ty caught a 35-incher with something huge in it's gut. As that fish was pulled on the ice, the line snapped, so after getting a picture and releasing the giant, we grabbed a nearby tip-up and stuck that in the hot hole. I started de-icing some other traps, but only minutes later I turned around and the hot hole was up again. I ran over and suddenly the entire trap jumped sideways in the hole. I knew that meant the line was snagged on the trap somehow, so I just grabbed the line and the fight was on. I had no way to give the fish more line so I basically had ten feet of line between my frozen hand and an angry, beast pike. Luckily the rig held and I caught my best fish of the winter - a ridiculous 37-incher. We couldn't believe what had just happened and I still can't... I've gone entire winters without a 35-inch fish, so to see one that big and an even bigger fish caught from the same hole within five minutes was simply mind-boggling.

So we fished during the day and at night we celebrated and I caught up with Ty and Mary and their cats and new dog, and it was a very good visit. I said how glad I was to have visited finally, and they agreed. I said how relieved I was that I didn't have to drive back. Too often, the looming drive back home seeps into the end of a visit... That thought takes time away from enjoying the company of friends you don't see enough, and without that thought lingering we just laughed right up 'til the end. And on Saturday night they drove me to the station and I hopped back on the Empire Builder... I think I said 'Au revoir' and did a dramatic wave before hopping aboard, or maybe I imagined I did. I finished whatever wine was left in my nalgene and watched the speckled lights of farms floating by on black waves. No stress. Bliss. When I awoke the sun was up and the Mississippi was wobbling by the big window to my left, bluffs of the driftless towering up beyond the windows on the right. It looked warm out again and the thought of spring trout streams tickled my neck. Did that all just really happen? My camera battery was dead. We crossed back into Wisconsin and then I was home and I slept for a long time.
 
-30-
 
You can view more pictures and the official stats from the trip in my Wild Almanac logbook.

Urban Waters

Probably no, I'll never escape the gravity of the city. Some days I feel like it's the only place with light and some days it's a black hole, from which no light escapes. What am I doing out here? What am I doing in there?

Weightlessly I orbit, and once again I was pulled back into Madison on Friday night. I saw some old buddies, we had some drinks and went out dancing. It was electric. My buddies in the band had people over after the show and then the sun was up. The darnedest thing. I had come down here for some ice fishing on my former home waters, but how can you go to bed when you finally get in a room with your old bowling team and a barrel of beer? 

So we got a few hours of sleep and then we got some breakfast, and then we made our way through the traffic to the lake. And somehow the spot off the American flag was open, so we set our traps on the premium coordinates and got used to fishing with each other again. There I was, surrounded by houses and noise and incoming commercial air traffic with Fritz and Cheeto. There was no wind. It was maybe the finest February ice fishing weather I've ever experienced. Last year we had three good chances at a really big fish on this spot, and that's why we had come back here, and then at 4 the closest flag jumped, and Fritz caught the fish above. It was as if a long-term plan had finally been realized. We whooped it up and probably worried some of the neighbors.

Before dark Cheeto caught another pike, and then a third flag popped and it was my turn...

And I busted the pike badly, and I could tell right away it was not big, but was excited to get one on the ice anyways. I felt the fish running around the beam of light... fighting against the light... or maybe against the gravity of my pull... This was natural. It was how it always was.

I pulled the pike through the hole and looked it in the eye. Now you and I are the same on these urban waters, you poor wild one. Of course the fish was wounded. There was some sort of infection, something hurtful that had never healed properly. 

And I was disgusted by this, but why should I be? Weren't we both still following our instincts despite it all? I put the poor boy back into the lake, and we both weightlessly set back into orbit around these bright lights. 

-30-

The old-fashioned box trap

Something doesn't belong here...


I easily obsess. Ice fishing became much more than a hobby, for me, a long time ago. And let's call it what it is: Out there on the frozen lake, we are trapping wild beasts. I realize it's an odd way to spend so much time. The spread is this machine from my mind... It is a creative outlet... I construct from frozen water, this pattern... I feed it small fish and it brings me big fish, and I take their picture. I am very particular about my machine, but it is always organic, derived from the day, and so I never have complete control over it's design. I only want the best for my spread, so I take good care of my traps, the mechanisms of this device. Probably, I'd be better off directing that attention towards more important things, but will I ever? I wonder.


I have more traps than I need, but it's good to have a deep tool-box. And they all pretty much look the same and work the same way, when you get down to the moving pieces, and then there's this box trap I got my hands on. My buddy Tim stopped by for the weekend and he brought this old-fashioned gizmo from the roaring twenties. This old relic is the kind of trap my Grandpa Walter would have used back in the day. It's a beast of a contraption and awkward to use, and there's a reason they don't make them like that anymore, but Tim quickly explained that it did one job better than anything I was currently using.

The old-fashioned box trap, Tim noted, is perfect for running monster bait. The reason is the box keeps the hole from freezing up so often, which allows you to use a huge bobber to keep the monster bait under control.

Our foot-long friend Glen, pictured here, is such a bait. As I said before, when I put little fish into the machine, it produces big fish... So what happens when you put big fish into the machine? Aha! A-HAA!


Well at least that's the idea. Tim agreed to loan me the box trap and two jumbo suckers, Glen and Gary, since I live on the lake where the Wisconsin State Record Northern Pike was caught and this type of monstrous presentation seems appropriate for the setting. Nothing has happened yet, but I know this strategy requires great patience. 


And I am willing to be patient to get what I want... So I spend days and days sitting out there trapping, seeing, waiting for the biggest fish in the lake to wander by and think, Oh my, Mister Glen, you Handsome Devil... Why, I bet you are quite delicious! 

And I watch the other folks out there fishing with worms and catching little perch, smaller than our friend Glen, and I can't understand why there are people who don't want the biggest fish in the lake as badly as I do, and I wonder what kind of machine I am to think that way? Am I an old-fashioned box trap in this world? Do I not belong?


-30-

Riding the Pine Highway: On proper tip up etiquette and procedure

Everyone calls the moment differently...

It all depends on the situation, of course. Who you are with. Where you are fishing. How long it's been since a fish has been caught, and a multitude of other factors. The classic is calling it by name: "Tip-Upppp!" I use that out of habit nine out of ten times. Sometimes I just yell "Flag!" Other calls I've used include "Yep" and "There it is!" Occasionally I'll just start running towards a struck trap with swift silence. The key is not the words or actions used but the tone. When your trap has been hit you must convey the excitement of the moment in your call... You must let your fellow anglers know - instantly - that the time for action has arrived. A big rule we have on the ice is "No Running or Yelling!" There are exceptions, like if we are playing football... But excitable actions like running or yelling are primarily reserved for the big moment we are all seeking out there on frozen lakes.

I would say there is a sort of honor in getting to make the call... Of course you have to be the first to see the flag to sound the alarm, and so over the years I have developed a 'constant scan' when I am on the ice with bait in the water. I do this automatically, like breathing. I program the spread into my internal GPS and then I spend the hours looking for the slight change in picture that tells me the moment is here. It's not that I'm looking for the risen flag, so much as I'm looking for the motion or ... or what is out of place here. The sensation of that realization is one of my most alluring addictions, and I'm not ashamed to admit such foolishness. I take pride is editing the spread, on noticing, on sensing the attack. It's one thing to land a fish using a fishing rod and nets, but quite another when the line is in your hand, when the net is literally your hand... and so every second is crucial for success.

Watching your traps is just one part of the big picture, out there. Unless you are in the right spot at the right time, with your traps set at proper depths with the perfect bait, you are already of-pace. It takes many correct decisions just to get that bite, and even then nothing is guaranteed.

The complexities of ice fishing dynamics could fill a book but there is no substitute for actual trapping experience. You really must know the thoughts of your fellow anglers, and this can only be achieved through many days and nights on frozen waters. I have a telepathic connection with my main crew of ice fishing buddies - Chinwhisker Charlie, The Warden, Silly Deen,Wolfspotter and Slowhand Lucious - but we only share that bond because of the systems we have perfected through the years. And I would say the system allowed us to more quickly form the bonds that join our thoughts on the trap-line.

(Another fun part of ice fishing culture is the selection of a fun 'ice fishing character' that is tuned for precision setup and flag-watching and hand-to-hand combat with massive cold-blooded fishes ... mine is Ike Walter).

We call our system "Riding the Pine Highway." The origins of this peculiar name are unimportant... It was coined after a day of drinking beer in sub-zero temperatures and it is fun to say. So it stuck. What that phrase means is the subject of tonight's post.

You could say the Pine Highway is a philosophy... But I guess it's more an extension of the laws of nature. At the heart of this system is this truth: You will be judged by your peers. Each angler is responsible for his or her own traps (or 'rigs'), and when it is your turn on the Highway and the moment arrives, your form and results carry weight. There is pressure to do well, but what the system really requires is that you are honest in assessing your effort once the moment has passed.

The Pine Highway is a communal system designed to give each angler the best chance at catching a fish. When I first started ice fishing each guy would bring his own rigs and it was kind of an 'everyone for themselves' deal. If you were new to the sport and didn't know what you were doing, you learned by watching... The Highway is more of an apprenticeship, it offers a sense of teamsmanship in the cold wind. I am sure we are not the only ones that use this sort of approach, but I don't think it's the norm. Essentially, when we are using the Highway, each angler will put his or her best three traps into the collective trap-line (you are allowed three lines in Wisconsin, at least). So say four of us are fishing. Normally you would have your three traps and if you happened to pick an unlucky location, then that was your problem. But with the Pine Highway, all twelve of those traps are now in play. We use a 'shotgun start' method, so that if you have a good rig with a good bait in the right spot, and it goes up first, then you get to take that flag. Eventually a 'lineup' is created through this process and then the sharing begins.

Riding the Pine Highway indicates that you are 'up to bat' ... that all of the group's traps are now yours. So instead of fishing with three traps you are now using all 12 ... or all 21 ... or all 30. Whenever that next flag pops it is yours to take. Doing this ensures everyone gets some action and usually everyone ends up with a fish at the end of the day. At this point I am always hoping I catch a big one, but if Chinwhisker catches a monster then I consider the day a huge success. And if I have a fish on the board, then I am always hoping my buddies get the next one. So I guess I'm a Bolshevik.

The key 'moment within the moment' comes when you are on the Highway and a trap springs... Hopefully you catch a fish, but often there is no fish to catch. Sometimes they hit the minnow and drop it before you can reach the line. Sometimes the minnow is a rascal and the flag is false. The brilliance of the Pine Highway system is giving the 'rider' the power to 'make the call.' Was it really a fish or not? If not, you are still on the highway, but remember, you will be judged by your peers! Even if you end up getting two 'falsies' in a row it is usually time to jump off the highway, making way for the next in line. There are only so many flags to go around on most days, and so, you don't want to be greedy with your opportunities. On good days we might go through the lineup three times fully. Sometimes it's your day and sometimes it's not. This is the nature of trapping.

While I enjoy the basic philosophy and real-world application of the Pine Highway, it is not a perfect system. Like communism, it fails on a larger scale. The more people in the system, the more impracticle it becomes. Once you have six or seven people on the highway, it is likely the people in positions six or seven won't get an opportunity unless you are on a high-action lake. So there are still cases where 'every angler for him- or herself' is the best option. But, in groups of 2-6, the Pine Highway is an ideal method for giving everyone the best chance for success, and that is why we have enjoyed utilizing the system whenever possible.

-30-

Solstice Pike

Author's note: This is the second part of my 'rare solstice' series. Part one was Solstice Wolf (June). -am

This is not a rare fish, but a rare result when you know the whole story. I have been fishing Lake Puckaway for seven winters now, dedicating numerous days each 'early ice' to this massive lake me and the boys half-jokingly refer to as "big, shallow and evil."

December of 2006 was really good fishing, and December of 2008 was some of the best ice fishing I've ever experienced. But in 2007, '09, and '10 we didn't catch squat. December on Puckaway is an unquestionable indicator. When you catch fish in December you will catch them all winter, it seems, and when you don't, you might as well not fish there until summertime. This evil lake has a definite 'switch' in the winter... it is manic-depressive... feast or famine. And it is most definitely evil. 

I will not go into the official file, but there is ample evidence as to this lake's evilness. We are all convinced the waters and surrounding land are possessed by an entity we simply call 'The Father'. Nothing comes easy here. And you might ask, Well why don't you go fish somewhere else? This is a reasonable question. However, the state record northern pike was caught here, and whenever we are able to overcome the The Father's sinister defenses, we have earned amazing rewards. Not state records, but we've caught the kind of fish here that make you keep coming back even after two straight winters of catching absolutely nothing. We are not chasing reason, but something more like unlimited potential at great risk.

Since I've been living here I've been keeping my eyes open for omens: Would it be a good winter or a bad winter? It seemed every other day I would swing the other way. Things would be going really good for me, I would be feeling an electricity, and then the next I would be feeling gloomy and questioning why I had even moved here.

And then there is the squirrels and the cat. 

There are hardly any regular gray squirrels here. There are lots of black squirrels and albino squirrels. I see them all the time. It's somewhat disturbing but mostly I laugh. It seems when I see a black squirrel on my morning jog the day is depressing and when I see an albino I have a really great day. If I see my turkeys and deer it will be a so-so day. And any day I see the black cat I might as well just not go outside. I think I am becoming like the lake, living here full-time... I am developing a polarizing switch of sorts. I like it here and often thrive on the solitude, but it is really lonely sometimes and I become suffocated by the emptiness of this existence. Especially when I can't fish, when I am stuck inside with my ... thinking. So now I guess I'm predicting my life on some kind of self-fulfilling 'critter sighting' scale. It works for me.

I awoke on the shortest day of the year and just knew I was gonna see that cat on the porch again. Finally I got up and made some coffee and I knew I couldn't sit inside again, so I got my gear together and went outside. And right away I saw the albino squirrel. Hey buddy! He ran off. Then I got to the lake and somehow it had added a few inches of ice overnight even though it barely got below freezing. I decided to go out by myself, and I eventually found myself on Jerry's Reef, or close enough I figured. As described in the previous post, the ice had formed and then broke up and melted, and then refroze earlier this week. The result was strange fields of heave ice, where huge blocks of original ice had been caught in the secondary shell. It was the thickest ice out there, much safer than the smooth stuff, so I put my traps amongst the heaves and got some reading done (Hell's Angels). 

 

At noon I heard the emergency siren in Princeton so I had a shot of bourbon. The air was calm. Around 12:40 the sun popped out and I noted this. 'Light changes' often spark a bite, for whatever reason. You can't argue with the data. And sure enough, at 12:49 I looked up from Hell's Angels and the middle flag was up. I trotted over and the line was not moving. But when I looked down the hole I could see the line was waaay off to the side, and then as if on cue, the spindle began moving again. Muscle memory took over and I quickly set the hook and landed the little pike. It was only 25 inches but nice and fat and feisty...

But as I've said, it was a fish that filled me with excitement for what it represented. I knew exactly what a December pike would mean since I got back here. And then at 3 the sun peaked through the clouds again and another flag popped... And I missed this fish but it was most certainly another strike, and so as I watched the sun set on the Winter Solstice I started doing the calculations. The data was very promising. I knew we were looking at a special winter. I texted the boys the good news, and I felt hunger and was satisfied, so I picked up the traps and marched home.  

Back daylight, today belongs to the darkness.

-30- 

First ice, no ice [+video]

The boys came up to The Fort last weekend for our annual 'first ice' trip on Lake Puckaway (The Puckopener), and we just barely had ice. This will be my seventh winter of keeping general logbooks of the things I do (primarily outside), and every year so far we have had walkable ice (1.5 inches or more) by December 10. Some years are creepier than others. For as much as I ice fish, going out on the ice for the first time each winter is alarmingly unnerving. I have never really* gone through the ice and I don't ever want to, but I do take some chances. And this week's weather is proof of that.


Yesterday it reached 50f here in Mecan, Wisconsin, and it rained for 24 hours straight. These are two of the primary enemies of ice, naturally. But ice has resilience! We could all learn a thing or two from ice. I always say, based on the scientific data of my logbooks (of course), that "it takes a lot to make ice and it takes a lot to melt it, too." Well it might not be purely scientific but I've found lots of truth in that 'rule'. I've been ice fishing in t-shirt weather in the spring. Long-term trends matter a lot more than current conditions.


Anyways, so then the wind picked up today. And that shot any ice fishing plans I might've had for this weekend. The lake is nearly wide open again, so we'll need two or three really cold and calm nights to get back to square one again. Frustrating. I have a winter to live here full-time and we're now two weeks off the normal pace. More time to write, I guess.


Since the ice was so scary last weekend we didn't go very far out and so we didn't catch any fish... but we did enjoy the ice nonetheless. And so I present my newest video project: Slidin'!!!!! [warning, there is some cursing in here, sorry, I got excited]

* - Going in shin-deep on shore in the spring doesn't count.

-30-

Monsters on the Clearwater Loop

Me and the fellers got out to the beach yesterday, as it finally got above 70 and we all had the afternoon off. Great time. We met a few other fellow trail residents, including a couple with a big friendly black dog named Monster. All of us had a blast playing catch on the endless sandbar, and it felt like summer for the first time. 

Johnson Falls, cooking

A week earlier the majority of our Clearwater crew got the rare opportunity for a group camping trip in June, and with two nights on the table we set out on the Clearwater Loop - one of our most popular trips in the mountainous eastern boundary waters: Clearwater to Caribou, to Little Caribou to Pine (passing Johnson Falls) to McFarland, to John to Little John to the Royal River, to Royal Lake to South Fowl to North Fowl to Moose to Vaseux to Fan to Mountain and finally back into Clearwater. Although we paddled this route in June it had yet to feel like summertime in the northern wilds, with vicious winds peppering our faces as we looked across the water into Canada. But it was no longer springtime, either. The bugs were thick, the nights no longer cold. 
After work on Monday we set out on calmer waters, racing all the way to the middle of Pine, one of the biggest lakes in the region, finally securing a dynamite campsite on the north shore, which featured a huge granite slab on the shoreline. Once night fell, Martini led a fantastic craw-dad hunt amongst the rocks, and we managed to fill the kettle for a breakfast feast. 

I was feeling alive, like an animal, so I grabbed my sleeping bag and set up on the slab under the stars that night, the first time I've done that in a long time. Clear skies and the Milky Way running over my left shoulder, the sound of doomed craw-dads scratching at the pot to my right, I remember thinking, wondering, I guess, what the chances were that this was real... giggling...
In the morning the light was uncoordinated, probably because of the storm moving towards us.

We waited out the rain and ate tiny lobsters, then began a long day of paddling into the wind. For all of us, it was the first serious paddling of the year. By afternoon we had made our way out to the border lakes and into Moose, where turning back west, the waves worked with us.
Approaching a mild point, Erik proclaimed someone would catch a fish here, and sure enough, it was his trolling line that was soon crushed by a monster laker, which we later ate for dinner on Mountain.

 Tuesday night I was seduced into the art of hammockry, and I must say it was comfortable sleep-floating between two pines. Erik and Tori, also in hammocks, reported the sounds of a terrible attack on the Canadian side of the lake during the night.
They said it sounded like an animal had become a meal, screaming. 

The wind shifted back to the west on Wednesday, and we struggled home, sore and happy. Once unpacked we hit up Trail Center for Prime Rib Night and feasted ourselves, satisfied. Then it was back to work, and thoughts of new adventures...

Lakers in the fridge

The first week of the Minnesota fishing season passed uneventfully here in the eastern Boundary Waters... Too cold, nothing doing. 

But we kept after them, day after day, paddling after work against the gusting winds. Crankbaits, spoons silvery blue and copper with pink, dead oily ciscos, tiny spinners and monstrous depthraiders. We hit 'em with the kitchen sink and the cast iron stove and a pile of buttermilk pancakes. We whistled at 'em, called out to them from the shoreline during the work-day.


Hey so yous get any down at the other end of the lake? Oh you don't say? Interesting, very interesting. Heard the folks in cabin six got a couple, too. Gotta get back out there after work tonight, storm is moving in, air feels right.


Yep yep. 


Finally amidst a mist Erik cracked the cork on Clearwater, right where we'd been expecting them, just before sunset. A real nice one, too, just over 23 inches, spotted and slippery. 

The clouds hung around the entire next day so we planned on hopping up to the border lake north of us after work and doing some trolling in a richer environment. We flew threw the portage and within 15 minutes of starting our run Erik popped another one on the same bait from the night before. Another nice one, just under 20. We circled the bay and the next time through I finally got my first laker of the season. May 24, ten days since the season opener. We got a few legit bites in other spots, but it turned out we had some kind of action every time we'd pass this one ordinary-looking stretch of shoreline. I got another one just before sunset, and on the next run, Erik got our fourth of the night, ensuring we got our limit for the day. Those lakers went in the fridge, and our first fish dinner of the summer is now on the menu for Saturday night, coinciding with the arrival of our final crew member and the completion of a productive month.


Tonight they've predicted lows in the 20s again and the herb garden has been covered. The window on lakers has just opened and in a few weeks the nights will warm and the mysterious predators of Clearwater Lake will retreat to freakish depths, taking canoe trolling out of play until autumn. 


And as the nights warm the mosquitos will rise up in great numbers, and the hum of traffic on the trail will similarily increase, and I will associate the difficulty and reward of lake trout pursuits with the quietness of May and the beginning of my active isolation. Funny how a month up here changes your definition of busy. 


:::

More photos at my Wild Almanac Logbook

Cold Waters

I've never missed a Wisconsin fishing opener until this spring, and it hurt to spend the first Saturday of the month painting boats on shore rather than rocking across a lake with my buddies, but I knew I'd miss certain things in order to live up here: Fishing trips, weddings, the comforts of familiar surroundings.

Such is the price of animalization...

Fishing opener is one of the most important holidays for me, and I try to explain this to people, but most fail to grasp the importance of shivering in a boat floating above cold waters. Saturdays in early May are rarely balmy, favoring hard winds and some form of precipitation most years. Since the water temperatures are also frigid, the fishing itself is also usually poor. But it doesn't matter. If I can be out there I will be out there with a smile on.

The Minnesota fishing opener was one week later than Wisconsin's, but being so much further north, I was sure we'd be seeing some nastiness from our friend Clearwater, who'd only dropped her winter-time ice on the preceeding Wednesday afternoon. Me and the boys worked out a scheduling change so we could work in the morning and then fish the entire afternoon in pursuit of Lake Trout - a finicky mystery of the deep that only nears the surface when the water's the coldest.

That's not to say cold waters will lead to actual catches. Lakers are tricky fish.

After trolling and casting the steep shorelines and numerous rock reefs of Clearwater from noon until sun-down, the three of us had nothing to show for our efforts, aside from the usual wind-burn and ideas (good or bad) on how to improve our tactics.

On Sunday we were back at work, but before dinner I set out again (in a canoe this time) to slowly troll a Little Cleo around our neighborhood bay and the adjouning "General Sherman's Reef"... Again, nothing was interested. Surely Ol' Sherm was giggling at my rustiness, watching my lure drift by as I struggled to keep my canoe in a straight line against the clipping east winds.

I've seen some slow fishing in the early season, but going Oh-for-Two didn't sit well with me. I was hungry for Lakers din-din!

On Monday afternoon we decided to give Clearwater a break, opting instead for a stocked Rainbow Lake down the way, but that, too, proved impenatrable. While I had a trout follow my lure to the boat and turn away, and I saw two more chasing each other (not me spoon) in the shallows, we got skunked for the third straight day.

Things were getting serious in camp. Drastic measures were required to unlock these cold waters. We decided to give the finicky trout a break.

Tuesday night we put a canoe on the tow boat and motored down to the back end of Clearwater to portage into a 'secondary lake' - that is, one step out from motored lakes. Generally, the further you get from the motors and cabins up here, the better the fishing. A simple concept, but it's not a condemnation of the perimeter lakes, either. We could have continued bashing away at the deep mysteries of Clearwater's Lakers, but by Tuesday we just wanted to put a fish in our hands.

And it worked. We landed three small pike trolling rapalas in the shallows, and returned to camp happy, even without a fish dinner on the table.

Kwas and I had off on Thursday, so Wednesday night we paddled back into another new lake that had a single campsite and was best fished early in the year, since it was shallow and weed-infested by mid-summer. By noon on Thursday we had landed ten pike, most of them small with a few in the mid-20s. It appeared we were the first to use that campsite this year, as dry wood was plentiful.

Today is Friday and for my first week of fishing in the Boundary Waters I've managed eight pike with nothing big, and been shut out on trout.

But I've also been able to fish every day of the week, and it's only going to get better as the waters warm, so I'm perfectly happy with the results so far.

The trout still haunts me, though, so I think my best bet will be getting after them at first light, before work, when the lake is glass calm. When it comes to Lakers you can never guarantee anything, but I'm fairly confident the next week will be better than the first, and that extends beyond fishing altogether.