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Almost Ice-Fishing
The End of an Error
By Ron McFarland
Sometime in the 1980s, my fellow poet and friend Dennis Held, a Wisconsinite born to ice-fishing, introduced me to the frigid aspects of angling through the ice [see “Ice versus Fly,” IDAHO magazine, May 2015]. I remember thinking how one advantage of freezing your can off was that pests such as mosquitoes, yellowjackets, and deer flies would be no problem. Also, you wouldn’t have to worry about taking a header while wading the snot-slippery streambed of Lolo Creek.
As I have aged, I have become more sedentary, a condition to which ice-angling is well adapted. At the same time, I’ve also experienced the inconvenience of attaching a microscopic #18 fly to my tippet. One needs one’s magnifying glass on such occasions, and one finds one has forgotten to bring that implement. One ties on a sensible #12, to no avail.
It follows that ice-fishing should be my angling method of choice, yet two years ago, I joined the Clearwater Fly Casters and quietly opted to resign from bobbing a salmon egg or corn kernel up and down through a hole bored by my aging ice augur.
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One Response to Almost Ice-Fishing
Gerard Rakoczy -
at
Ron,
Your words parallel on my own recent evolution of life, fishing buddies and spouse concerns.
These days I walk slower and creak more while sitting on a large ice block. My son-in-law took a new job far away. So now he and my grandson share hunting and fishing adventures with me, through pictures and e-mail. I still make it to the ice bound trout hot spots by my self. To the worry of my wife and dear pup, (who both refuse to join me)
But alas, I was running the hills and woods of my youth by myself to the worry of my parents. Six decades of learned life and outdoor skills are not discarded because I go alone. It’s just sad others can’t enjoy with me God’S great beauty that is exposed on my adventures. Man made pictures to capture things. God gave me eyes, ears a nose a heart and mind to capture and hold my pictures in. This life can be pinched out in a blink. I just keep moving (slowly and creaking) and enjoying. Until I’m pinched out! Keep moving!