Ice fishing is an activity only a fool could love.
It takes a special breed of person to want to ice fish in the first place. Fortunately, these people can be identified early.
They are the ones you used to see staring out the classroom window all day in school. You know, the friend with the name you have to call at least three times before he answers, because he has all the ambition of a bowl of tapioca pudding.
But do not be fooled.
Ice fishing is not an entirely idle pursuit. It can be hard work, beginning with a long trudge in deep snow across a frozen and unforgiving body of water, which may or may not have fish in it.
When you feel you’ve trudged enough, work can begin on bashing, boring or burning a hole through solid ice several inches thick. It is work with little reward, unless you count standing motionless in the cold until your extremities turn black.
The ultimate reward of ice fishing is the fish itself; but catching one is not as easy as you might think. As unintelligent as fish are, most are scholars compared to the dullards up top hunkered down in the ice and snow.
If fish can laugh, then the ones under the ice must be howling their air sacs out. They sit down there, looking up at you through the hole, and watch you freeze with some sort of twisted fish glee. You may even hear one laughing, when your teeth stop chattering.
Every once in a long while, however, a fish will happen by and be interested in your bait. Your only saving grace is that this fish is less intelligent than you are.
The odds of this are actually in your favour, simply because of the cold. Let’s face it, five minutes in that water with nothing on but your freckles and you’d probably be dead. The fish deserves some credit.
But not much.
He’s idling by, one or two degrees off brain dead, thinking your minnow is the best thing he’s seen since the mayfly hatch last June. So, he swallows the hook.
The key now is to be patient, which shouldn’t be too difficult, if there’s any of that kid left who used to stare out the window counting clouds.
When the fish begins to swim away with your minnow, he quickly realizes it is attached to a line, which is attached to a frying pan, which is attached to butter and flour and salt and pepper.
The fish can’t really see all of this when he bites the hook, because not only did he fail to plan well for his future, but it is really dark down there under all that water.
Keeping fish in the dark is the only chance an angler has of bringing one up through the ice. By keeping you out there in the cold all day, the fish ensures that your little game of cat and trout will at least end in a tie.