When we lived in Minnesota, several friends that were natives dragged me out to ice fish. It wasn't the cold (the huts are usually well heated), I found that ice fishing really isn't about fishing......it's about drinking.......it is a day long excuse to sit in the hut and get plastered, while dangling a line in the water. Many of the huts were even equipped with a TV (either battery or generator operated) so that the occupants could watch either the Vikings or Badgers play, and get even more plastered.
It was not infrequent that they would find some poor bastard frozen stiff.......dead drunk and passed out, when his heater propane bottle ran dry.......
doc
Memories of the ice shacks for smelt fishing. Cold, very cold, Ice shacks on the Lampery river. 1960's.
Trudging through the snow on a path to the river, year old baby bundled up on my back, come about 10 pm as the tide was coming in.
Moon giving light sort of to 20-30 shacks on the ice.
Waiting , just waiting for the run of the smults.
The fishermen up river would yell out --Here they run--and down river the fisherman would get ready for a night of hard repetive work, catch and throw into buckets and barrels.
Most ot the shacks were one man places, a retuclertangular cut in the ice, a board above it with hookes with blood worms ready to be lowered when the run came in. The worms were used at the start, as the smelt ran then just a hook would catch them, hand over fist, the suckers came in and busshel baskets were filled.
Not much room in the ice shacks, at that time , a lantern for light and a pillow for the fisher were all I remember.
For us poor folk back then the these Smelts sold to locals made a month or more of money for heating and electricity.
Back then the shanties were the size of a one holer outhouse, the biggest mordern day device was the lamp Colrman I think.
