Miljoonapilkki

Ice fishing in Finnish.

The first action required to ice fish is to drill the hole. Usually the auger, the ice drilling device, is about 8 or 10 inches, maybe 12 inches in diameter. This diameter of hole would cover 99.9% of the fish you could potential catch during your cold adventure. But none of this explains the overwhelming confidence and optimism that the fisherman in the picture above must have possessed. You think he optimistically drilled a giant hole in the ice, with a chain saw perhaps, with the foresight that he would land the whale shown in the picture? How big would the hole actually have to be to pull the monster fish you see out of the lake? But I digress. The subject of ice fishing is important with or without controversy.

Because after hockey, moose riding, and Finnish saunas, ice fishing is a favorite sport of the north. After the fall turns to winter and water to ice, the ice fishing season begins in earnest.

I’ve always been very fond of ice fishing. After you auger your hole in the ice, and hammer a metal-pointed stick in the ice with a line attached, and away you go. What this actually means is that you then retire to the card playing, drinking, snowball throwing, snowmobile riding or the generally staying warm activities that are required while you wait for the damn fish to pass by and take your lure. There is no trolling in ice fishing. And as “Joe” says in the ML Star Gazette this week "It's something to do”. “Joe” definitely needs to get a life.

There’s also no logic in ice fishing. Again from the Star Gazette: “Three of the fish came out of one hole, so we took turns fishing out of that one hole.". Another insightful quote: “It seems fish are less eager to get hooked during the winter months”. Now that is just stupid. You think springtime comes and this fish says “oh it’s warming up, I think I’ll get hooked”?

My love for ice fishing derives not from sustenance. In fact, the only allergy I possess is from the indigenous fish in the area from which I derive. If I ate one of these creatures pulled from the ice hole, my throat would swell and I would die. My love for the “sport” comes from greed.

It at was the Moose Lake Ice Fishing Contest that I won the grand prize drawing for $500. Big bucks for a 12 year old in 1976 and very lucky when you consider I was one of 2500 tickets sold. When they announced my name over the loudspeaker, I was so excited I ran across the ice and stepped into an ice hole. A small price to pay for being rich! I bought a used Honda 3-wheeler. I had wheels!

Ice fishing is more of a religion than a sport in the north. In 2005, 115,000 permits were issued for ice-fishing houses in Minnesota. There are web sites on how to build an ice fishing house , some of them outfitted with all the comforts of home — carpeting, TV, bunk beds. There are even whole towns built on lakes. Towns with stop signs and police patrols. The largest such encampment is at Mille Lacs Lake, near the Canadian border, with more than 5,000 ice houses holding an estimated 20,000 people -- a population greater than that of 90 percent of Minnesota's towns. The winter is very long in Minnesota.

Besides drinking to excess, the thrill of ice fishing also derives from the danger of the sport. In the Gulf of Finland, a village-size piece of the annual ice shelf broke free from shore, carrying about 200 terrified ice fishermen with it more than a mile into open water. They had to be rescued by helicopter. God bless the ice-fishing Finns.

But besides drunken, drifting Finns, the sport has international appeal:

“Anglers from as far away as Venezuela, China and Australia were among the 11,300 participants in the 16th Annual Brainerd Jaycees $150,000 Ice Fishing Extravaganza held this past Saturday, January 21st.” http://icefishing.org/

Do you really think some bloke from Venezuela actually found his way to Brainerd Minnesota in order to stand outside in the freezing winter cold to stare at a hole hoping the biggest fish in the lake would bite his dead, frozen worm and win him the Big Prize?

Well it happened to me...