HOW ICE FISHING SAVED MY SANITY AN ALASKAN FOUND COVID RELIEF BY SPENDING TIME ON THE HARD WATER BY ERIKA SMITH
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t’s the middle of winter, and signs of cabin fever are showing: restlessness, excess energy, the munchies, lethargy. The confusing set of symptoms are brought on by the lack of daylight and the limits placed on us by Old Man Winter. We’re dreaming of open water, T-shirts and a local brew at 8 in the evening, when the sun is still hanging out reminding us why we live in Alaska. But this time of year Alaska is asleep – tucked away under a layer of ice and a blanket of white while waiting to thaw out and bring us the summer adventures we live for. In the meantime, subtly and still covered in slime, the fish are swimming below the hard water, conserving energy and waiting for a lure to drop through a 10-inch hole in the ice.
PASSING THE PANDEMIC TIME Think back to the beginning of the Covid pandemic: You know, the time when the term “quarantine” became standard for being sentenced to work from home, i.e., rolling out of bed at 7:58 a.m. and logging on to the computer only to validate that no one else knows what’s going on all day. Then it was time to log off and make some semblance of dinner because you were relearning how to live your life without all of the regular amenities; then binge-watch the Avengers movies; have too much energy to go to sleep at 9 p.m.; wake up the next day in a fog and do it all over again. It was during this perpetual Groundhog Day that I found ice fishing. One of my friends called me up and
As the Covid pandemic forced plenty of Alaskans to isolate and quarantine, the opportunity to get outside – even in the winter – and go ice fishing proved cathartic for many locals. (ERIKA SMITH)
proposed the idea that we get out and try the Upper Midwest pastime, just because. “What else are we going to do?” And, “I know there are some big trout out there.” Naturally, we rented Grumpy Old Men on Amazon Video and pumped ourselves up for some quarantine fun. (I highly
recommend this Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau classic – and its sequel, Grumpier Old Men – just to get yourself in the mood.)
STOCKED AND READY At first we started just going out to lakes marked by the familiar brown Alaska Department of Fish and Game sign,
aksportingjournal.com | FEBRUARY 2022
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