Remembering why you’re fishing

WILLIAMS, Minn. — The walleyes and saugers gave new meaning to the word “slow” during a recent ice fishing trip to Lake of the Woods.

For the seven of us sitting in four heated sheds on the two-foot-thick ice of the 1,680 square mile lake at the 49th parallel of north latitude, the slowness took two forms.

For seemingly interminable intervals we saw nothing on our sonar units resembling the electronic blips representing fish. During such times, it is hard to stay attentive, knowing the water in your sphere of influence is devoid of fish.

During other long stretches, we saw such blips tantalizingly close to the blips representing our baited jigs. Almost invariably, however, our initial excitement would wane as the fishy blips did nothing more than stare at our jiggy blips, leaving us to wonder how a so-called game fish could hang out indefinitely with a vulnerable minnow without invoking the predator-prey relationship.

The absence of fishy blips soon resulted in boredom, while the presence of non-biting blips resulted in frustration. The members of our party — Dean Baragary of Monti, Bill Sloan, Mike Mulnix and I, all of Quasqueton, and Don Dutler, Doug Reck and Mike Stafford, all of Winthrop — could hardly tell which form of “slow” we liked least.

Consistent with the underwater inactivity, our battery-powered radios — used in better times to share information about fish caught and effective lures and presentations — seldom squawked.

All that down time and a cellphone enabled me to calculate that the square foot of lake bottom 36 feet beneath my two 10-inch holes in the ice constituted about one 47 billionth of the space available for Lake of the Woods fish to roam. So yeah, no wonder I can’t catch a fish, I told myself.

Whenever one of us would mention doing something else, like maybe returning to our resort cabin for a game of cards, another of us would recall the words of our inspirational leader, Jim Brace of Winthrop, who was prevented by illness from joining us on our Jan. 24-27 trip.

“You came here to fish, right?” was Jim’s standard retort whenever anyone suggested doing anything else.

So fish we did, from daylight to dark, through boredom and frustration, occasionally experiencing flurries of activity that netted enough keeper-sized saugers and walleyes for two all-you-can-eat fish fries, plus about 30 more fish to take home.

As slow as the fishing was, however, it did include several interludes of intense excitement when one of us set the hook into something heavy.

Early on the first day Mike Stafford landed a 28-inch walleye that tied the record for the biggest walleye any member of our group had caught in the 10 years we have been making the trip. It also netted $30 from our daily pool that pays the first angler to catch a walleye within the 19.5-to-28-inch protected slot limit on Lake of the Woods. Later that same day, Don Dutler landed a 23-inch slot walleye that paid nothing since Mike had already emptied the daily pool.

On the second day, no one caught a slot fish, so with the carry-over the pot stood at $60 when I hooked a heavy fish on the third day. Fearing it might be an unwanted eelpout, I kept my hopes in check until I could identify it as a sizable walleye. It came up peaceably until it reached the base of the ice, whereupon it wedged itself lengthwise against the hole. While I considered my next move, my shackmate, Dean Baragary, handed me his long-handled gaff, with which I pushed the fish downward and maneuvered its head toward the hole.

Before I could even think about grabbing or gaffing it, the fish burst through the hole like a submarine-launched Polaris missile. At 22.5 inches, it was my second slot fish and first money fish.

On the fourth and last day, Doug Reck caught a 20.25-inch slot walleye, ensuring a fresh start to the pool when we reconvene next January for our 11th such outing, which we hope will provide a little less peace and quiet.