Ernie is back to his ‘world’ after having spend a few days in another. I am referring to my winter fishing trip to Lake of the Woods. This rather huge lake lays on the border of Canada and the U.S. It is the next largest body of water, after the great lakes, that is part of this country. It is roughly 70 miles from north to south and just slightly less east to west. One remarkable thing about this big water is that it contains over 14,500 islands, most of those are on the Canadian side of the border.
We enter the lake near Baudette, MN right along the side of the Rainy River. Depending on the snow conditions our travel on the lake will either be on roads that are plowed and marked by the guide or if the snow is too much to keep a road open, we will be transported in a tracked vehicle. These are often a converted cargo van that has been fitted with huge tracks like a snow machine and can ride on top of the snow and go almost anywhere as long as they don’t hit a spot of slushy water on top of the ice. For safety they are also outfitted with an emergency floatation system that by pulling a lever the guide can inflate huge air bags that is suppose to float the vehicle. I have always wondered if they would work, but fortunately have never had the experience for finding out.
Depending on where the good fishing is located, we go out from 7 to as much as 15 miles from shore to what is called a “sleeper house”. This is where we spend the weekend fishing, sleeping and living.
This year was considered a good one for us. We did not keep track of the number of fish we caught, which were Sauger (a crossbreed fish much like walleye but never get very big), walleye and a couple whitefish. Sometimes we also catch large eel pouts, that look a bit like a cross between an eel and a catfish, only uglier than either, but fun to catch. We have eaten them, but I am not fond of their fatty soft meat, although if cooked properly it can be good grub, especially if you have nothing else!
We got started fishing around 11 AM on Friday morning and by evening had enough fish to feed 4 hunger fishermen all we could eat of the crisp fried fillets. Saturday night we even ate more, plus we froze some for bringing home.
There was no really large fish caught, the longest I think was a 22 inch walleye that was caught at 1:30 AM on Sunday morning. It seemed the sauger were biting during the daylight hours and the walleye after dark or late in the night, at least this year.
Being that the wind was on a ‘roar’ the whole time we were there with the thermometer around the 0 mark or below, we did not spend anymore time outside our fish house than necessary. The wind did bring warmer air by late Saturday night, but with it came snow on Sunday morning. That made the first 100 miles or so of out trip home Sunday a bit ‘dicey’ for the road conditions, but we made it safely back, having had a grand time on the ice.
For those unfamiliar with this type of fishing, there are a few things that are remarkable on a large lake like this one is. For one, the ice was good since they too had very little snow this winter. The ice on average was around 18” thick and even on a large lake that is enough to support almost any kind of vehicle. But the lake is never ‘silent’, there is a stead sound of popping, cracking, groaning, mixed with a roaring wind outside our house.
When it is really cold and new ice is forming, the whole body of ice moves slightly, especially in a wind. This creates what is called ice heaves or pressure ridges. I have see these heaves that were over 10’ tall, made by two opposing is shelves crushing against each other at a crack in the ice. These break the ice and push up huge blocks of ice to make almost a wall of ice that can for miles on a large lake. When these are encountered on the roadways, the ice must be chopped out and a temporary bridge put in place to drive a vehicle across the broken up ice.
On Friday night it was very cold and at one point we heard one particular ice crack that went for the longest time I believe I have hear one run. It must have lasted a full 20 seconds and rumbled close enough to our house that the water was pushed up through out fishing holes slightly. It is nothing to be fearful of, but interesting to watch the water raise up, maybe as much as in inch and then settle by down to its normal level. We wondered that time if a crack would actually form on the ice under our house, but it must have went somewhere else near us.
Now that my ‘winter vacation’ is over, it will be time to get back in the swing of a full work load that I have been avoiding since my hospital visit over Christmas. But today I must first do a little snowplowing to clean up a few inches that has gradually accumulated over the last week or so and has now gotten to be a nuisance to walk around in all the time. But being past the mid-point of January, I am not going to complain about a little snowplowing, it was months past due and still not very much of it.
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