Today I popped into a little market for a cup of coffee, and was rather amazed to see they had a cash-container/sign-up box for the contest for guessing the correct date for the Ice Melt on Joe’s Pond. I thought about doing it. I’ve gone by there enough times that I’m intrigued by the whole thing. It fascinates me, actually. And it got me thinking about ice on the various lakes around here, and how long it lasts…
I went for a splendid walk at Shelburne Bay recently. The path was a little snowy & icy, but walkable. It was a beautiful day, crisp and cold, and the light filtered down through the layer of cloudcover, becoming translucent and silvery in its passage. I kept looking east, to my right as I progressed along the path, gazing out at the ice-covered bay. There were no ice shanties out there. I didn’t see any ice fishermen either. Oh, wait. What’s that? I watched a few moments, and yes, there was a lone ice fisherman out there. Not in a shack, just out there, by himself, hanging out. It was starting to snow, so the visibility was getting bad, but I could see him. I’m assuming it was a him. None of my women friends icefish.
Anyway, I kept walking and soon lost sight of him, but it brought to mind a memory of the one and only time I’ve gone ice fishing in the last 40 years.
It was back in the day when I was still married to the wasband. Our son was still a wee babe, we were at his parents’ house for Christmas, visiting them in Iowa. Grandpa mentioned going ice fishing, so we put the baby down for his nap and with Grandma home to watch him, off we went, to one of the farm ponds nearby.
Grandpa did it in style—he had a fancy new ice fishing shanty that his kids had gotten him for Christmas. They had it set up in good time, and there we were, the three of us (him; his eldest son, my then-husband; and myself), hunkered down inside it, a line each in three holes we drilled through the ice, hoping for a bite. I might add at this juncture that fishing in itself has never been a draw for me—something about dead amphibians really hits me the wrong way. But I sat there in good faith and good feeling, enjoying the novelty of the experience.
After about 20 minutes of sitting, nothing was happening. We were getting cold, even in the shanty, but we didn’t want to go back empty-handed. I had not revealed the true extent of my weirdness to my in-laws, and was a bit reluctant to do so, but something needed to happen. So, I opened my mouth. “OK, guys, we need to start visualizing here. If we want to go home with fish, we need to start concentrating. C’mon, see those cute little fish biting these lines, lots of them, coming right to us.” The wasband was mildly receptive to this plea, but Grandpa snorted his disbelief. I focused then on my husband, “OK, honey, just visualize the fish flocking to our lines, keep holding that vision.”
Within a couple of minutes, I felt something, and pulled a fish out of the hole! Another twenty minutes of sitting there, and I ended up with about a dozen fish, my husband three or four, but poor Grandpa had none. Which was odd on the face of it, seeing as the holes were mere inches apart! Those fish were delicious, too, when we sat down to eat 45 minutes later, fried and tasty as can be. The power of visualization was once again put to good use.
That's my fish story, and I'm stickin' to it!
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