I frequently advise people that the best time to go fishing is when you can. This nugget of advice is simple: You could keel over dead tomorrow and if you’re waiting for that perfect day to go fishing, you’ll pass many a day in waiting. Hot, cold, rainy, stormy – if you can fish in it safely, you ought to give it a try.
My in-laws come together on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, Minnesota’s winter trout fishing Saturday opener, to fish for lake trout at the end of the Gunflint Trail. The trip began a decade ago to remember the life of Joseph Sierakowski, family patriarch and lover of the outdoors. Other family members have passed away since the tradition started, so the memorial aspect has been heightened. Above all else, fellowship, great meals, memories, humorous observations and camaraderie in a gorgeous part of the state bring our family together each winter.
Minnesota’s trout opener also coincides with what is typically one of the coldest weeks in Minnesota’s winter. Our group has fished in -20 Fahrenheit temperatures, but the ice fishing experience is often miserable. Propane fuel and heaters become less predictable because fuel contraction drops outflowing pressure and propane gas switches to liquid form at -44 F.
Combustion engines started by batteries have issues with cranking power delivery. Ice and frost forms on everything. Fish houses become rigid and impossible to collapse for transport. Ice freezes on auger blades, making them inoperable. Plastics not designed for extreme cold break apart. And people must be protected; skin exposed for as little as 5 minutes in extreme cold can develop frostbite. You wear as many layers as possible and still feel cold. Stranded, miles from help in a wilderness area, is a poor place to find yourself.
Adding further to the challenge of these winter angling adventures is the fact that our family fishes on a couple lakes, some with and some without sections that are within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). When we fish the non-motorized BWCAW sections, we trudge in with hand augers and gear in tow or on our backs.
This year, I unleashed my smitty sled on our non-motorized expedition. I had designed the sled for a medium tub, but the extreme cold forced me into bringing my largest tub and lots of heaters and equipment to keep us warm. I pulled the sled a short distance before it self-destructed. Smitty Sled 2.0 will have additional support braces to handle heavier loads. We sucked it up, set the pieces of smitty sled 1.0 aside, and dragged the heavy sled in three fifths of a mile.
“If you’re gonna be dumb, you better be tough,” I quipped as we started the drag, perhaps something of a prophecy. We hand augered holes on blades that I could have sworn were sharp, which meant they took a lot of time and effort. Luckily, we only had to auger a handful of holes once we found our spot.
After setting out at sunrise, I was disappointed to be dropping lines at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, well behind schedule and behind what is often one of the best bite windows of the day in the first few hours. I caught our first lake trout on our lunch hour. A second came to hand a couple hours later. When we packed up and came in, I learned one of my wife’s uncles lost his GPS down a hole and we found more troubles awaited us.
The family house’s furnace, replaced earlier in the summer, was malfunctioning and a frozen drain pipe had backed up the septic. Did I mention that cold is hard on equipment? The septic was addressed with a house call and the furnace was scheduled for replacement on Tuesday when a new one would be available. In the interim, we’d run the water slowly to keep the pipes moving and burn wood in the fireplace to keep the house warm. Long underwear, wool, and blankets became normal indoors attire.
Sunday it was colder and the challenges continued to mount as the ice fishing remained slow. When we’d had enough in the early afternoon after venturing shorter distances to find fish on account of the cold, we hiked back out to the snowmobiles to drive back home. I had the pleasure of an unresponsive key start and got to spend half an hour blasting my engine block with starting fluid, putting in and then removing spark plugs repetitively, and pull starting the machine in dangerous wind chills. I finally got things running in the -10 Fahrenheit air temps and -30 wind chills and headed for shelter.
When the mercury in the thermometer dipped to -40 on Monday, wiser heads prevailed. We skipped the fishing day trip, huddled around the fireplace, watched some Netflix, and started our vehicles on 6 hour rotations to ensure they’d start the next day. We ate warm and hearty beef stew, drank hot tea and coffee, and tried not to think about if the fish were missing us as much as we were missing them.
There will be days in the outdoors, when just partaking in angling or a hunt is an accomplishment. Trips like mine last weekend are the ultimate reminder of how we define a successful time in the outdoors. Returning to and from a trip safely are the definition of success. Our time ice fishing in the coldest temperatures we’ve experienced in our lives were only possible because we endeavored.
Adventures are not made sitting on the couch. The cold brought tremendous challenges, but it also brought us together and gave us memories and stories. My hope when we next get together isn’t to catch fish, but to catch a good time. But just between the two of us, dear reader, would it be too much to ask for it to be a little warmer?