Father Water, Mother Woods by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen [Paulsen, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80419-8
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

Fishhouse Dreams

Sometimes cold weather came long before snow and there was enough time for the rivers and lakes to freeze without snow accumulating on the ice. This period would not last long but when it came, as soon as the ice was thick enough to hold weight, we would skate on it.

Not to just skate or play hockey but to go and see country. The rivers became ice highways that led to lakes, small frozen streams, openings into the wilderness that usually lasted only a week or so and demanded exploration. Skates allowed speed and we flew through the early winter, and while most of these explorations were for hunting, now and then they led to fishing.

Light brought the fish to the surface, or as close to the surface as they could get, rubbing their backs along the ice, and skating above them we could see them. Somebody thought of chopping a hole through the ice—usually only a couple of inches deep—and trying to “herd” the fish into the opening where they could be netted, and after trying for hours we finally caught a northern in a dip net, and after that we always tried to do this when the ice froze before the snow came.

When the ice finally became thick enough to hold serious weight—usually by early December—the ice fishing season would start. There were two methods. Nobody could afford fancy augers so usually an old axe was used to cut a hole in the ice and we fashioned homemade tip-ups to use for rigs. A tip-up was just a stick across the hole and another across that, the two bolted or tied in the middle to make a cross. From the end of one, a line was tied with a sinker and hook, and it hung about six or eight feet below the ice with a piece of raw chicken or a silver pickled minnow (if they could be afforded) bought from the bait shop.

Then everybody went to shore and gathered firewood enough for a bonfire, which was made on the ice not too far from the hole. The boys would stand by the fire watching the tip-ups and waiting for a fish to come along.

When a fish took the bait—usually a panfish, crappie or bluegill—the one stick would flip up in the air and the fish could be jerked up. It was simple and not really fishing so much as just taking fish.

The other method involved using a fishhouse. In the winter people would put small houses on all the lakes and rivers, huts really. In the floor of each house a hole was cut and a similar hole cut in the ice beneath the fishhouse. Inside the fishhouse it was kept dark, and hours could be spent watching down in the green hole, jigging a lure up and down to draw northerns in where they could be speared with a ten-tined, foot-wide spear.

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