A crazy ice fishing story. (Part One)

Stranger than fiction - you gotta read the whole thing!

(Note: I recorded the audio of this fisherman telling his story and then transcribed it. He preferred to remain anonymous.)

Part One

So me and my best friend - his dad is from Mexico… His whole family’s from Mexico - We got together years back, and he started coming with me on my hunting and fishing adventures. And he’d never been ice fishing. So we went down to Wisconsin to the driftless area and bought an ice house for 80 bucks. And we came back and we went to Shady Oak Lake in Hopkins, Minnesota. It’s one of my go-to Metro clean lakes. I go to that lake because it’s got a spring, a warm spring, and it’s clean water. It’s three small lakes connected, very small. The one in the middle is where I go because all those lakes are very shallow, but I was able to find a 36 foot drop, and that’s the deepest in the lake.

So anyways, we got that ice house, and we went out there and set it up and started fishing on that 36 foot hole. We drilled some holes by hand and pushed the ice house over it. We sat there all evening, into the night, and it was really cold that year. It was 2019, so right before covid, and we weren’t really catching anything. We caught some sunfish and maybe a perch. Nothing special. But he was happy to be out there with me, and I was happy to be out there with him - his first time ever doing this kind of stuff. So it was cool.

Technically, what I did, from my knowledge, is illegal. It’s not that big of an offense. I don’t even think I knew it was illegal. I might have known it was not good.

But, anyway, we had that ice house. It was a pop up with a hard shell and a sled. And it had holes with plastic covers that can cover up your fishing holes when you’re not using them. I have these old ice fishing poles - there’s no reels on them. It’s just a wood stick with an ice pick that you stick in the ground, and then you hand-fish. So I put some new 80 pound braided thread on there, and I set it up to where I had three sucker minnows. In the state of Minnesota, you’re allowed to have three pieces of bait on one line, all within nine inches of each other. I put a big weight above the minnows, so when I drop it down the minnows just spin around near the bottom. This is a bait I set up for Northern pike because I love Northern pike. I grew up eating it. That’s my favorite fish. They’re hell of a fight. A lot of people don’t eat them. I love to eat them.

Anyways, we were calling it a night, and I said, “Well, let me drop my stick in the hole.” And the cool thing about that stick was that it’s wide enough that you can just set it on top of your ice hole, and then, you know, it’s not going to go anywhere. So I say “Well, I’ll leave these out here all night. We’ll come check it tomorrow.”

We worked together too - we did at the time. So anyways, I dropped that down into the water, and left it there, with his line out too. We closed up the holes with the covers and snapped them in place to lock them in. We left our paper there on the ice house, which you’re supposed to do. If you leave your ice house unattended, you have to leave your phone number, name and fishing license number, so if a DNR officer finds it, he can call you if he has a problem.

Yada yada. So I’m trying to make this quick, because I know otherwise, I’d be here all night. I’m a slow talker. From northern Minnesota, trying to make it quick. Anyways, we leave them down in the holes. We were dumb kids. We didn’t think about tomorrow. We didn’t think about weather. We didn’t think about anchoring the fish house down. We thought, “Oh, it hasn’t blown around right now. It’s heavy enough. We’re fine.” We packed up our stuff, left the house, went home, parted ways, went to bed. He picked me up in the morning and we went to work.

Well, that morning we had 25 to 30 mile-an-hour winds with 60-70 mile-an-hour gusts. It was insane. And it was negative five out. We worked at the car wash at the time, and I remember I was power spraying. It was probably about 9:00am and the eastern wall of the entrance of the wash was a big piece of ice from all the spray. At that time of year we’re doing tons of cars. A hundred cars an hour - we’re busy. So I’m spraying these cars and I’m just like, “Fuck, man, this wind is crazy.”

And I’m just thinking, “It’s only 9am and that ice house is out there.” I looked at my weather and saw 65 mile an hour winds. Oh my God. So I’m like, “We got to get to the ice house.” So my buddy, he was a driver, so he hopped out of one of the cars. He pulled up under the track as I was spraying. I go, “Hey, come here,” and he runs over, and I go, “We got to take our break together. I’m going to make it happen, because we got to go check that ice house.” He’s like, “Yeah, man, it’s really windy.” And I’m like, “Yeah.” So I convinced my boss. I don’t know how, back then I just - I worked with these guys for so many years, I convinced them to let me and him go on break together.

So we break at 11am, the lake is five, six minutes away. So we shoot down to it, and when we get there, I run out to the edge of the lake, and I see this black thing, like… moving. Not where my ice house was, but a ways away. But it won’t go any further - it’s shaking, but it won’t blow away. The wind’s just blowing across the lake. Western wind. So anyways, we run out on the lake, and I say, “Oh, it’s my house!” And you couldn’t see what was happening until you got really close. It’s like a, “What is going on?” kind of a situation. You wouldn’t think what happened happened.

So we get up close and see something in the air. It’s my fishing line. The holes are way over here, and my ice house is way over there, probably, I’d say 15 yards away. And there’s two tight lines coming out of the hole. And I go, “What the fuck?” So I get down to the first hole, and thought that the lines overnight got tangled up, and then that wind came and pulled the house so they were stuck under the ice together and couldn’t blow away.

Well, as I was messing with the line, I realized that it wasn’t because they were tangled together. It was because I had caught a big Northern pike that was lodged sideways in the hole, and tangled up with my buddy’s line. And she couldn’t really swim properly, and I guess she got wrapped up, and then when the wind blew, it pulled her up, and she went bam, sideways, up under the hole. So she’s lodged up under there, not moving, just stiff. And I’m trying to pull the other line, and I can’t, and I go down in the other hole and see her - I see her sideways, and I couldn’t make out what it was. The side of a Northern is kind of green, whitish. And I’m like, “What the hell?” And I realize now that the Northern is holding my ice house from blowing away.

So I take my knife out, and I grab this custom fishing gaff a buddy of mine made for me and another fishing pole. I grabbed the line that was holding my house, and wrapped it up using the leverage from the gaff and pole, cutting my hands all up as I was wrapping it. I was trying to get slack in the line so that I could get the fish out, without losing it. I knew if I just cut the line, the fish would swim away. So I get a little bit of slack, and then I go wham, and I cut the other line, and then I go down to the hole, and I get that gaff down in there, and I turn her normal, and I pick her up. I had to reach down and turn her with my hand and pull her out. It was a 10 pound Northern. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t realize till later after I cleaned her that she was filled with eggs too.

Oh! By the way - the best part about the story I left out because I’m going so fast, is when I cut the lines, my ice house just completely flew across the lake and collapsed into itself. It just busted up in a tangled mess. It was just wrecked. It was wrecked.

So, mission successful. I had a big Northern - she was 28 inches long, and my scale, which is an old scale, said 10 pounds. But a lot of people tell me nowadays that those old scales are not accurate, so I don’t want to say for sure she was 10 pounds, but that’s what the scale said. So those new scales are a lot more accurate. I’m guessing if she wasn’t 10 pounds, she was at least seven. She was so heavy, she was all girth. And that lake is crazy because it’s so small, but it produces such big fish. I have pictures to prove it, of like two and a half/three pound bass out of there. And I’ve caught a 32 inch pike out of there too, off a jumbo sucker in the summertime.

And my buddy was so pissed off. He’s like, “We went all the way to Wisconsin, and now the ice house is ruined.” So, we had to cut it all up. We had to break it up into small enough pieces and tie it all up because it was so windy we couldn’t get it out of there otherwise. But then I had this giant, 28 inch Northern - I mean, giant doesn’t sound right when you say 28 inch, but she was… she was so girt, like, so much girth, it was crazy. I was just like, “Man.” Then we went back to work. So that all happened… within 20 minutes. We got all of that to happen and threw it in the truck and went back. And then I cleaned her later that night.

She was alive, by the way, which is the saddest part about the story. I feel horrible because I don’t like to do that. But I mean, she was in that hole, alive the whole time, and not dead, like you would think - she was very alive. Because when I pulled her up, she was flopping all over me on the ice, and I stabbed her in the head right away with my knife and just put her down so that she wasn’t suffering. Because I immediately felt so bad. It was the first thing on my mind. I was very excited, but at the same time feeling very bad about the whole thing, knowing it was my fault that she was in that situation from my stupidity. There’s a lesson learned, for sure: don’t do that dumb shit. Don’t leave a hole. Don’t leave it overnight, especially with another line there. And don’t case your stick under the cap of your ice house.

And I think if I remember right - on my buddy’s line, there was a sunfish. So it was kind of like… I did not care about that fish at all. Yeah. When I pulled that Northern out and I saw that sunfish, I didn’t… I didn’t even care. I was so happy about that pike.