All The Comforts of Home

Well I finally made it ice fishing on Mille Lacs last Friday. My fishing partner was Tom from down the street and I presented a couple of options before we left. One was to take the snowmobiles with us and drag our shacks out to the fishing spots. The other was to simple hitch up the smaller trailer and drive the vehicle out onto the ice to fish. Being at zero degrees, the "drive to our spot" seemed more practical, even with the nervousness Tom expressed about the total ice thickness. Having stopped at the Milaca Hardies for lunch and Lundeens Tackle Castle for bait and a replacement battery for my underwater camera (I suspect this was the reason the camera was so cheap at Cabela's bargain cave), we headed to Dewey's. A number of resorts have closed on the west side limiting the traditional access points, however they have been replaced by private access points operating on the lake by a few innovative local entrepreneurs. After depositing $10.00 in the locked mail box we headed out on a well plowed road, driving about 3.5 miles to the 28 foot depth just off of Indian Point. Meeting Dewey at the end of the road, we introduced ourselves, confirmed our deposit and he was kind enough to plow a parking spot for us. I set Tom up in one of my older portable all black fish house. Although the air was chilly, the sun quickly heated the house and along with a Coleman lantern, it stayed nice and warm. Drilling those first holes confirmed the ice thickness at around 20", more than enough to support my truck. Being one to spread out somewhat, I dragged my Thermal X about 100 feet from him and set it up. My heater is a Big Buddy propane heater that really works nice for this house. Being well insulated, I can get real comfortable inside, as you can see, it is at least 60F inside. This year I made a plywood base for the heater as it would tend to melt a significant amount of ice causing a very slippery situation. I generally drill 2 holes inside the shack, one for my dead stick and one for my jigging rod. My depth finder (Vexilar FL-20) will reside in the jigging hole to watch the action. As stated earlier, fishing without my depth finder is like driving blind and it can make all the difference in the world on your success. Because of the flash some parts of the display is not showing however if you look at the green line at approximately the 8:00 position, this is my bait (It is at about 25 feet) and the thicker green line just below it is a fish checking out my offering (at about 26 feet). The transducer has a white styrofoam float which suspends it in the hole while keeping it pointed straight down. Sometime if you get a large fish, you need to pull the transducer out of the hole to avoid tangles and losing the fish. I also tend to drill about 10 - 15 holes in a 100 feet radius outside of the shack to provide an opportunity to move around, looking for active fish. For a dead stick presentation I bought a rattle reel that clamps on to the interior pole supports. A rattle wheel is a simple large spool with a number of little rattle type bells inside that make noise when a fish takes line and runs with it turning the spool. Normally my dead stick is a standard ice rod but decided it would be better if when outside fishing, I could hear if a walleye decided to take the bait inside the shack. It works pretty good. Although the shack is somewhat heavy, it can be pulled around very easily with my ATV or snowmobile, going anywhere the fish are biting. We concluded the day with 3 so so perch, 3 very small walleyes that went back, and I had a very nice fish on that never showed it's face. (Thanks John!)

One of my favorite blogs is "What's Dewey Doin' ", which is written by a good friend and past customer of mine, Duane (Dewey) Ness. He retired up north and besides doing all those things I look forward to in retirement, he also writes his blog. It was a definite inspiration for "Fishin" With Dave". His latest post was discussing the difficulty in getting his permanent shack off the ice. One issue we have in Minnesota is the amount of snow on the ice tends to force water up causing a lot of slush. Once the slush has been exposed near a house it freezes solid, leaving a huge problem getting the a house unstuck and then moving it. He had quite an adventure eventually getting the house back on shore assuring future struggles would be limited. It reminded me of the days when my friends and I had a permanent house. Minnesota State Law requires the shacks to be removed off of public waters no later than February 28th. We had the house for a couple of years, a simple 8 x 8 (derivatives of standard plywood sizes) built on a modest frame with 2 x 6 skids. The walls and ceiling were bolted together for easy assembly and tear down. We had extreme snow that year and a week before the 28th a warm spell had melted the snow and then refroze causing at least 4" of ice covering our floor. We ran into town and bought 50#'s of water softener salt and spread it across the ice covering the floor. Returning the next day to remove the house we were pleasantly surprised to see all the ice on the top had disappeared. Unfortunately the ice was solidly holding our floor in from the bottom. After 4 hours of chipping it was obvious we were running out of time. A guy came by noticing our plight and offered to take care of our problem in 5 minutes. He had 30-06 rifle and after securing a box of shells he proceeded to shoot the bullets through the floor with the theory the bullets would strike the ice and shatter it. After a box of shells we had a house who's floor was riddled with holes and still as stuck as before. Eventually were able to pry the floor up breaking it into a few hundred pieces. Dewey claims that this would be the last year of the permanent house. It made me think of that last year we had our house, learning our lesson some 25 years ago!