Have you ever been ice fishing? No, it’s not sitting around fishing for ice. Hmm, I wonder what you’d use for bait if you were fishing for ice. A stove perhaps? Might work if the ice wanted to be warm. Lol, enough, I’m talking about drilling a hole through the ice and fishing for perch, walleyes or northern pike.
With all of the new ice fishing shelters they’ve come out with and even the old fashioned ice houses I use to fish out of it’s not a freezing cold sport anymore. If you’re ice fishing now and you’re cold that’s your fault. There are now houses and shelters that will keep you as warm as being inside your own houses.
Winter ice fishing is much different from summer open water fishing. In some respects it’s much easier and in others it’s harder. It also takes a little bit different equipment for ice fishing. First off if you don’t have an ice auger it’s going to be tough to get a hole through the ice.
I’ve chopped many a hole in the ice without an ice auger but it gets to be very hard work and I never wanted to move around much or even move the house if the ice was to thick. Using an ice chisel to chop through 30 inches of ice just is not fun. Using an ice auger just makes it that much nicer.
You don’t see as many permanent ice fishing houses around now as you used to. I had one that was 8 feet by 14 feet with an attached outhouse. The ice house slept 3 people and had 6 ice fishing holes. It also had rattle reels for each hole, a 3 burner cook stove, electric lights, an apartment sized furnace and a double insulated picture window.
While it wasn’t the height of luxury as far as fish houses goes it was better than the first one I ever had. It was just a 5 x 8 plywood shack with no insulation at all. We heated it with kerosene heaters that were pretty much antiques when we were suing the 50 years ago. Stinky and smelly but they threw enough heat we could take our heavy coats off and be comfortable.
Nowdays it’s a different story. Propane heaters, fish finders and even TV’s in the fishing shelters. Lol, we had a transistor radio and that was it. No electronics of any kind and for sure no cell phones. Ice fishing is a sport now, where you move around to find fish. It used to be you sat and waited for the fish to come through. Lol, I like it better now.
If you think you might like to try some ice fishing or just want to know more about it check out the link I put in at the start of this little story. There are 3 or 4 pages about ice fishing on that site and they will pretty much tell you everything you need to get started ice fishing.
I know what you mean about technology changing fishing. There sure is a lot of controversy about whether to use a fish finder or not. Real men don’t use them, right?
Will
Fish finders are still controversial? To who, PETA? Real men use fish finders but they don’t eat quiche. IMO the underwater cameras are much more controversial than fish finders. Lol, even GPS is more controversial than fish finders are now.
Nothing like being able to buy a map with the gps waypoints already marked on it. While it’s made finding fish and finding spots where there might be fish, easier, none of the technology makes the fish bite.
IOW technology can help newbies to fishing find a ton of fish a lot easier than they could before, it doesn’t mean people can catch the fish they may find.
I think the old timers who learned to fish and find fish without the technology have a huge advantage over those who rely on technology to put them on fish.