Where there is ice, drop a line for fish

WILLIAMS, Minn. — Mild winters make short, iffy ice fishing seasons, even at the 49th parallel, where the northern tip of Minnesota meets Lake of the Woods.

The same super El Nino that conspired with ongoing climate change to create an unwintry winter in Iowa has disrupted ice fishing in one of the world’s several so-called walleye capitals.

Sven Sundgaard with Minnesota Public Radio spoke of an “incredibly mind winter … on track to be the warmest of 151 years.” December, he said, was the warmest on record in Minnesota.

Kelly Berggren, co-proprietor of Long Point Resort, our host for midwinter outings for the past dozen years, said it was the warmest winter in his locale since 1930.

On Jan. 1, just as the ice fishing season was finally getting under way, a pressure ridge cracked open just off shore, stranding 50 anglers who were safely rescued by the Berggrens and sheriff’s officers.

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Our party of eight had initially planned to fish the week of Jan. 7, but rescheduled two weeks later on the resort owners’ advice. Those two intervening weeks — the only real winter to visit the Upper Midwest this season — solidified the ice, creating safe conditions for Chuck Mazur of Rowley, Randy Ciesielski of Hazleton, Dean Baragary of Monti, Jim Brace, Doug Reck, Mike Stafford and Phil Stefan, all of Winthrop, and your correspondent.

The fishing itself was not exceptional. My shack mate, Steffen, and I had a couple of high-activity days that yielded lots of keeper walleyes and sauger.

We also had a couple of days that left plenty of time for discussion of such esoteric topics as: Can a change in wind direction or barometric pressure possibly affect the mood of a fish 30 feet down in dark water under 18 inches of ice? Does a fish really care about the color or style of your lure as long as it has a minnow attached?

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The first pulse of real excitement came on the second day when Chuck caught what appeared to be a money fish. We all contribute $5 per day to a fund payable to the angler who catches the day’s first walleye in the lake’s 19.5 to 28-inch protected slot. Chuck’s fish came up half an inch short and the pot rolled over, as it has for each of our last six days on the lake.

So after 384 angler hours (eight guys fishing eight hours a day for six days) no one has caught a walleye in the protected slot. That tells you something about the fishing or the fishermen.

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The trip’s biggest excitement came on Jan. 25, our fourth and final day, when Doug hooked a giant northern pike that tangled itself in his other line and both lines of his shack mate before he eventually pulled it through a 10-inch hole in the ice. During the battle the fish pulled one of Randy’s ice rods into the lake. In the aftermath, as Randy cleaned up some of the line ruined by the northern, he miraculously pulled up his lost pole through a different hole than the one through which it had entered the lake.

Minnesota’s lake ice season has shrunk by two weeks over the last 50 years, according to data from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The ice fishing season in Wisconsin is about 24 days shorter than it was in 1970, according to the Wisconsin DNR.

The same trend is apparent here in Iowa, according to Mike Hawkins, a DNR fisheries management biologist at the Iowa Great Lakes. Citing West Okoboji data going back to 1916, Hawkins said the record for the shortest ice duration is 75 days in 2015. The three shortest ice seasons, he said, all have occurred since 1999. That compares with several 140-plus day ice seasons in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, he said.

In addition to the trend toward shorter ice durations, Hawkins said the West Okoboji data show more extremes, including a record late ice-out date in 2018, April 29.

Of course the flip side of a shorter ice fishing season is a longer open water season, which I can live with as long as I can suppress the specter of the less hospitable world my grandchildren will inhabit.