Travel

The Joys of Ice Fishing

T. SHER SINGH

DAILY FIX
Tuesday, June 26, 2012

We are creatures of change. We are constantly seeking change and change has us constantly in its grips. Is that why we are taught to constantly strive for silence and stillness?

In the thick of winter, our thoughts turn to warmer climes. Now that we are in the dog days of summer, I find myself thinking about snow.

And about Thunder Bay, a city a thousand miles north from here where I now live. Perched on the northern tip of Lake Superior, it is where I spent my first two winters in Canada.

On a particularly hot day, I can’t help thinking of a trip I made a few years ago.

I found myself back in Thunder Bay for a holiday. With a whole day to spare, a couple of friends elected to drag me away for a day of ice-fishing.

I should add here: I do not naturally gravitate to fishing when I’m looking for a good time. Nor do I believe that being outdoors in sub-zero temperatures is conducive to making one jump up and down with joy.

I tried every excuse to get out of it: even flogged the flue bugs I had been nurturing then. But my friends would have none of it. One, a Swede, the other a Brit by ancestry, they seemed to consider it a personal challenge to introduce me to the pleasures of this very Canadian pastime.

So, on an otherwise gorgeous morning -- the sky was spotless, the sun magnanimous -- we loaded a half-ton truck with a snowmobile, skis, augers, shovels, fishing lines and related paraphernalia, food, pop and gas cans.

And dozens of minnows of varying sizes, swimming happily in plastic bags.

The women - widely acknowledged as a species slightly more intelligent than its counterpart - voted to stay behind.  

We head out a hundred kilometres straight north of the city -- yes, there is a world beyond Thunder Bay, and it’s called the North Pole! - and veer off on a dirt road. Ice, really, because the dirt is covered in a foot of snow, which in turn has a thick veneer of ice. We bump along for a few miles through the bush until a mountain of snow blocks our path.

I step out of the truck and sink waist deep into the powder.

No problem, says Jim, the Swede, who has snow streaking through his veins, I’m sure. He and Mark, who retains more than a trace of a Cockney accent despite more than 50 years in this freezer, turn into instant busybodies, like fish thrown back into water. I have visions of Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight in Deliverance which, cruelly, I saw a rerun of only two days earlier.

It doesn’t take long; without the benefit of any of the expertise I had to offer, we snowmobile our way over hill and snowy dale. We emerge from the trees and find ourselves on a frozen lake, at least a half-mile wide in each direction. Everything is blinding white. I put on my sunglasses.

Where are the huts, I ask. My friends stop and stare at me: “You’ve been watching Grumpy Old Men, haven’t you?” 

Not only is there no shelter, there’s no radio, no TV. There’ll be no heater either.

These fellows are purists, I moan to myself. They don’t even drink beer as they are supposed to, like Doug and Bob, eh?

We park smack in the middle of the lake, equidistant from all points in nowhere.

We unload our equipment onto the ice. My two guides stomp around for a while, trying to determine where the lake beneath us is deep enough and where the fish could be expected to be lining up for food. It’s sheer clairvoyancy, I tell you.

We begin to drill. They are not taking any chances. They’ve brought along a power auger. And a manual auger, in case the gas-powered one doesn’t work.

It does though and within an hour we have a number of 10-inch holes lined up.

There’s two layers of thick ice sheets beneath us, with water between and below them. We penetrate both layers, and remove the slush with a sieve. [Yes, they brought a sieve with them.]

We unpack the minnows. They anticipate the indignity and resist violently. But ultimately get impaled on the hooks. Where are the animal (fish?) rights groups when you really need them? The lines are dropped into the holes. The sticks, a variation on the usual fishing rods, are stuck in the ice.

We’re in business. We bask in the sun. The air is mercifully still. Though we’re dressed for low temperatures, it is warm enough for us not to need gloves all afternoon. We dig into our sandwiches. We take turns on the snowmobile, tearing around the lake carving circles and figures-of-eight.

We check the coloured ribbons on the fish lines from time to time. None of them have bobbed yet. We shoot the breeze. The conversation turns to lawyers. My buddies have some choice lawyer jokes. Northern versions. Standing here in the middle of a frozen lake, I’m an easy target. Good thing I like lawyer jokes.

“It was so cold this winter,” Jim starts off, “that, in Thunder Bay, lawyers were observed on street corners, displaying unusual behaviour. They had their hands in their OWN pockets!”

We guffaw on this for a while. Mark offers another: Two farmers were fighting over a cow, and finally called in a lawyer to resolve their dispute. Things got out of hand, though. One farmer grabbed the cow by the ears and started pulling it in his direction. The other farmer held his ground at the other end, pulling on the tail. Where was the lawyer while all of this was going on? Why, in the middle, of course. Milking it for all it was worth!

The jokes get progressively vicious. There’s a lot of anger against lawyers, I note, and none of it is latent. I dig deeper. They start talking about recent cases in the news where lawyers and crown attorneys have been accused of bizarre crimes. Of alleged cover-ups. Of the criminal justice system brutalizing the First Nations - stories of rape, beatings and murder at the hands of those responsible for protecting the citizenry. Allegations of lawyers refusing to help or intervene; sometimes even participating in the atrocities. 

No bite from the fish yet. The conversation turns to ecology and the environment.

Apparently, the fish aren’t biting as often in recent years. The past summer and this winter have been the worst yet. What’s happening, we wonder.

The sun, having done yeoman service in making us comfortable, heads for the horizon. We’ve spent seven hours on the lake. But no fish. These fish are not stupid, I mutter.

It begins to darken. I can now feel the chill in my bones. I think of the hot and sumptuous dinner Jim’s wife has waiting for us back in town - a few hours away. She had waved us off that morning with: “Ice-fishing is a male-bonding thing. Have fun.”

Can we head back, I implore. Jim and Mark reluctantly relent. “Spoil sport!” their eyes accuse me.

Back in the truck, as we start rolling, Mark turns to me: “Lots of fun, eh?”

“Yea-a-hh,” I reply, “this should be an Olympic sport, eh?”

“That’s for sure,” says Jim.

“You can say that again.” mumbles Mark.

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