Outdoor Guide
Page 4
January-February 2021
Back when winter was really winter
By BRENT FRAZEE
called off. All for five inches of snow! I hate to sound like a grumpy old man who starts his stories with the words, “Back in the day…” but I’m going to do it anyway. I grew up in a place where winter was really winter. A five-inch snow was called
I always smile when Missouri residents act like the world is coming to an end when it starts snowing. They load up on groceries, they are afraid to drive anywhere, and they stay home as school and work are
a dusting. Back in Illinois and Wisconsin – where I spent much of my life – snow, bitterly cold wind chills and ice were part of life. Winter was considered a friend, not an enemy. Instead of retreating inside for weeks on end, we were out in the elements, loving life on the tundra, as we called it. I remember snowmobiling across Wisconsin lakes such
as Winnebago at high speeds, the wind numbing my face. You think you know wind chill? Try doing that. IN THE SHACK… We often were headed for our ice-fishing shack, one of many arranged in neat rows. We followed “streets” that had been plowed on the ice and knew where to turn by following street signs. Our shack even had an address.
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There were so many shacks on the ice in those days that it looked like a small village. We had a heater in our shack and an old sofa overlooking a row of holes we had drilled in the ice. We used short icefishing rods to dip small ice jigs tipped with live bait into the cold water. The fish were sluggish and didn’t want a lot of movement. But if the transducer of the flasher unit we were using picked up activity, we knew we had a chance of catching fish. I remember days when we had a pile of yellow perch and walleyes on the ice by the time we were done. But the catching almost seemed secondary to the overall experience. TALKING FISHING Even when the fish weren’t biting, we would visit the neighbors and talk fishing. I remember one shack was decorated in an Old Milwaukee beer motif. The residents had a pyramid of empty beer cans on display and used a generator to illuminate an Old Milwaukee bar sign. Other fishermen had shacks that we looked at as palaces. They had a loft with sleeping quarters and a downstairs with a cook stove and recliners to relax. Some even had a television set to watch the Packers. Our group always talked about doing something like that, but we never got it done. Once I graduated from college, I returned to that winter lifestyle when I started writing outdoors for newspapers in Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri. THE EELPOUT FESTIVAL One experience stands out – the day I covered the International Eelpout Festival in tiny Walker, Minn., on the banks of Leech Lake.
The festival was the work of a marketing genius – a way to lift a lowly rough fish to royalty. Thousands of people would descend on Walker, set up shacks and fish for the eel-like, bottom-dwelling fish. The festival was dubbed “The Greatest Party on Ice,” and it lived up to its reputation. When they weren’t fishing, participants were taking part in ice bowling or curling, polar plunges, frozen T-shirt contests and even weddings. Sadly, the festival had to be canceled last year because of concerns about pollution and ice conditions. Town leaders are trying to come up with a replacement party. LOST ON THE ICE I also remember the day we traveled by snowmobile to the middle of Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota. We followed a guide and he took us to a spot so vast that we couldn’t see land in any direction. We caught fish from portable ice shelters, including some big walleyes, but we stayed a bit too late. By the time we were done, daylight was fading and our guide became a bit disoriented. We took several paths, including one around some nasty looking heaves in the ice, before he finally led us to shore. It made for a good story, anyway. I miss those days. Here in Missouri, the weather seldom gets cold enough to go ice fishing or snowmobiling for any extended period of time. But I return to North Country every once in a while to remind myself of what winter is really like. When I do, I always think of some of my fishing friends who are relaxing on a beach somewhere in Florida. And I say to myself, “They don’t know what they’re missing.”
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