Ice Fishing-Back in the Old Days

[Weed Shark]

Thoughts and memories on how ice fishing has changed from those of us who must've froze our brains on the lake, a long time ago:

There use to be alot more small perch, etc, left on the ice which wasn't a good thing; but the Eagles, Red Fox, and early arriving Blue Herons, did not mind.

My dad's fishing buddy, Hal (my other dad), owned and worked at sport shops, he told a friend about the "New" cup augers. The friend became the first distributor in the state. Before that, you chopped with a chisel. Gas augers? What are those?

Kids...sitting on 5 gallon buckets with snot dripping to our ankles...shivering and happy.

Hal, who must have got tired of buckets, still has his old clover leaf wood milk crate, on small skis. Also, his "Monte Belle" burlap potato sacks that fish were placed in. He told me recently, "We were too poor for taxidermy, once we traced some big crappies we caught on brown paper and kept them in the garage for a long time...geez they were BIG!" I don't think two pounders would've impressed Hal that way.

Help me get through the summer with your thoughts.

[WCT]

Great thread, reading your post made me think we must be about the same age. I too remember the days when you didn't move once you got your hole(1) open. My earliest memories of ice fishing with my Dad involve lots of trips to shore to fetch wood for our on-ice warming fire. No shelters for us. At age 6 or 7 it didn't take long for me to tire of fishing and all that walking helped keep me warm and busy.

Then on the trip home Dad would sometimes stop at one of the roadhouses for an adult beverage, and I would get a bottle of pop, something that I didn't get too often. I learned early on not to mention those roadhouse stops when telling Mom about my "fishing trip" My lifelong love of fishing is traceable to those days with Dad, just about the greatest gift any parent can give a child. Old Sneller

[slipperybob]

I can't imagine fishing in the old days...

I heard that some people built their igloos or snow/ice walls...Don't think I'll be seing any of those today. It would be great, then I'll always have a marked spot to come out again the following weekend. That's if the ice doesn't shift (that much)...

[The Grebe]

I sure don't miss those old days...well, maybe some of the stuff? I sure don't miss chopping holes by hand! I have to admit one thing though, the chopping along with the labor work I usually did, gave me a good set of shoulders!

I remember the smell of fuel oil from the old fish house stoves, if you stayed in them to long, your eyes would get all red and sore and you smelled like the inside of that fish house...so did the vehicle and just about everything you came in contact with. I did like the smell of the burning wood though.

Wasn't alot of hole hopping, get on the spot and wait em out, sometimes it would happen, sometimes it wouldn't. We used the black braided line and a mono leader on the end. The bobber was one of those red and white flat top things, with a wire at the bottom and around the middle.

Started icefishing with one of those poles with the long peaked ice sticker on the end, hand wound the line around two little pegs. Dangerous they were! I seen a guy accidently sit on one once.

Can't remember seeing a jiggle stick until about the late 50's or early 60's?

I also know that the winters were different then...more snow and more cold.

[fishing tech]

I can only remember ice fishing 1 time as a kid. It was on Gull lake with my Grandfather (who's shack we fished in), my dad and my young brother. I caught a northern with a broken off arrow in it and a walleye. I got to drive my grandpa's snowmobile 69 Arctic Cat Panther. My bother stepped in a hole at another fish house and lost his boot. The guys in the house next to that 1 caught it. Fun weekend with the Guys as a 10 year old. Grandpa was a farmer and had made a power auger out of a starter motor, ran it off of his truck battery. He was everyones friend. Sure do miss him. I guess thats why I got into ice fishing in the last 5 years with my dad. Good times, Great memories!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Eric Wettschreck]

We used fishing line tied to a stick. After all, that's all a jiggle stick was, right?

There was a guy that lived a couple miles away. I LOVED it when I saw him on the lake. He had one of those auger things. That meant no chopping!!!!!!

Cold, snow, 5 foot long stocking caps, my dad's black and yellow TNT snowmobile suit, chopper mitts..........Those were the days my friends.

[The_Duckslayer]

I miss those old days! Everyone now is too dam lazy for their own good. Gotta have power this and automatic that and electronics to no end. Yeah, we used to have to "work" for our fish! An old canvas house with a wood burner in it or if you wanted you could use charcoal. Everyone could fish, not just the ones that could afford all the fancy dump that they have today! Yeah I have a flip over, power auger and a MR Buddy heater and a Vex and it's fun to go ice fishing but some how it's just not the same. I am sure there are a lot of you out there thinking the same thing, finding them with a GPS and a Vex some how is just not the same. Take care and N Joy the Hunt././Jimbo

[fishinJohn]

Great thread! I remember as a kid my neighbor's dad had an auger so I missed out on the ol' days but I know my grandfather did some spearing. The igloo sounds like fun if you have a lot of time. I think a lack of time contributes to the success of products that make ice fishing more efficient. With the expense of college you are pretty much not going to make any money until you are thirty anyway so the hard earned fish are still out there; caught by the poor folk!

[The Grebe]

You know, back in the day, when I was a kid, the fish houses (I had the good fortune of having a couple of buds whose dads had houses on Mille Lacs) were made to withstand a nucular expolsion!

My friends dad had one made out of solid, raw oak, or that kind of wood thats in pallets...weighs about 300 pounds a square foot and you couldn't even pentrate it with a 30 06!

The runners where made out of more oak, wrapped with steel and I believe there was about 700 pounds of tar paper on the thing? They didn't move em often and they didn't move em far!

My friends dad had a 54 olds 4 dr. and when he invited me along and we hopped into that thing to head up to that fish house on Mille Lacs, I was just about comatose I was so happy!

I thought that when I grew up, I wanted to live on the shores of Mille Lacs in a house just like that!

[pegleg]

I remember prior to electronic depth finders and GPS units we would walk out on Mille Lacs looking for structure. We would chop holes and then put a line down the hole with a lead depth finder on it. Pull up the line and measure arm lengths for the depth. 5 arm lengths 30' of water and keep walking... 4 arm lengths, we are now on a bar. Who knows what bar we were on but that is where we fished. A lot of work and you never could find the same spot twice no matter how hard you tried.

[slipperybob]

Crazy Ice fisher peeps! LOL's

What did the cave people do back then?

[The Grebe]

Sounds about right? My friends dad would line up on things on shore and try to get like a triangulation cross reference.

Either that, or fish where everyone else was fishing, just making sure to give em room. The resorters I'm sure had some kind of marking system, but I was to young to think about stuff like that....I was on Mille Lacs and I just didn't care about anything else, I had a chance!

[pegleg]

Probably the best invention at the time was that little green box by Lowrance that could read the depth. I remember guys huddled around it and thought it was amazing how it could do that and we wouldn't need to check depth by hand anymore.

[The Grebe]

Peg leg....Do you know when the green box was available and affordable to the general public? When I was a kid fishing Mille Lacs, I don't even remember seeing a power auger? I believe it would have been in the late 50's, early 60's? maybe I just wasn't paying attention?

[Weed Shark]

Ah yes....the green box depth finders by Lowrance. I still have my dad's and still use it ocassionally for open water, although I have a vexillar FL-18. The green box is sensitive enough to pick up a suspended crappie while ice fishing.

I remember when the "bad" idea spread about pooring anti-freeze onto the ice so you did not have to drill a hole (minnow bucket water worked fine) to check the depth. Talk about polluting the waters, potent stuff.

[pegleg]

Grebe, that is a great question and I would have guessed the early 60's but I went on Lowrance's HSOforum under history and they discussed the "green box". It was invented in 1957 but reinvented in 1959 because of all the quality issues. They said it sold for under $150 back then (a lot of money back then). There were 2,000 originally made. Over a million have been built/sold since. Great info on their HSOforum about it.

[Weed Shark]

I was a young, ice fishing on buckets in late March with my dad. A Blue Heron stood behind us. I would catch a perch and throw it behind me and watch the Heron eat it. It was better than catching a fish.

[Dubleaa]

Ahh yes, the old spoon auger and steel tipped jiggle stick that Grandpa finally gave me, "once I earned it". My first plug of Apple Jacks chewing tobacco and a nip of Peaches (barfed both times). Staring down the spear hole and occasionally getting to touch the decoy line. Wow! It has been years since I thought about what fun it was back before the Jiffy power auger, Vex FL-18, Ice Castle with regulated heat and TV/DVD. Ahh, the memories!

[Dave]

How about a Heath Kit depthfinder, similar to the green box. My oldest brother's brother-in-law built one for him. Ever see one of them?

[hawkeye43]

Why is it that sticks out in my mind the most is that it was always so bitterly cold. I mean shaking in your boots cold. You had to chip ice all the time.

[The Grebe]

Because it WAS cold! Seems to me that the winters were colder way back when?

It also might be due to the fact that now there is warmer, cold weather gear?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one knew nothing about cold weather dress, had no one to show me (No winter people in my family) and as a kid, didn't have access to anything contemporary in the line of winter clothing.

I always used to put on a couple pair of pants, as many socks as I could get on and still get my feet into my shoes and then slip a pair of rubber rain boots over that.

I would put on the warmest, thickest shirts I had and as much outer wear as I could fit into. Pull a stocking hat onto my head, wear either a couple pair of Jersey gloves, or a pair of choppers.....I could barely walk and couldn't bend over....and I was always cold.

[Scott M]

"Allright gang, divide and conquer! Don't forget what Ye Old Thorne Bros. said, hit the weedlines, find the inside breaks, whatever those are, spread out and stick your head underwater looking for schools of fish!"

"I've been jigging this spot for 30 days now. 2 Walters, not too bad ehhh? Run and gun my a__!"

"I think I felt a bite through these one and a half inch gloves...or maybe it was the leather freezing up."

"This one's probably in the protected slot....A HA HA HA HA HA. I'm sorry, I couldn't say that with a straight face."

"Just you wait, once the action gets going there will be a whole town of ice shacks built up next to us. I heard Grandpa Genz was coming out to check things out with this new thing called a Shanty Trap...I guess he put his outhouse on skids and the walls flip right up!"

[McGurk]

Now that is some good time old-fashioned fun! Thanks for the pix; I'd love to see more if you've got any!

[GRAND DAD]

That was awsome I would love to see more pitchures like them?

[thirtysomething]

What an awesome thread!!! Thanks for jogging the memories guys. I still remember fishing in the late seventies as a little tyke. I of course stepped in whole, fell up to my thigh and cried and cried. Did dad take me home? Of course not, he started the car and ran the heater. I still have the gear passed down from my Grandpa. The metal bucket with a square cut in the side and padded seat somehow attached still comes in handy. It's comfortable and you toss the fish in between your legs. I still have a couple of the rods with the metal spikes in the end and the original braided line. I don't use em, but carry them in my bucket for luck. I remember the first reel I received was a 3" plastic one that you would use the bolt as your drag. I was sorting through some old stuff last fall, and came across the above mentioned green box. It was definatly a different time back then. It seemed more social, I remember groups and groups of people standing around, having a good time, socializing, you'd go to the big group, cut your whole and wait, everyone would whoop and holler when the fish would move by their holes, then you'd just wait until they came your way. Thanks for the memories guys, Great Thread!!!