I just got back from the moon.
OK, that’s not true. But a few weeks ago I did undergo an adventure as close to traveling on the moon as I’ll ever experience.
I went ice fishing on Lake Erie.
Now you might be wondering what Erie has to do with that big pie in the sky. Well, where do I begin?
For starters, ice on Erie is no skating-rink smooth sheet of frozen water. Traveling over it is akin to traveling across a hardened lava field – or across the moon, I assume.
In the three days I spent on Erie with Walleye magazine Creative Director Brian Lindberg and Big Water Guide Service Capt. Ross Robertson, we never made a trip onto the ice of less than nine miles one way. And to travel at least 18 miles of ice each day, we had to pick our way through ice heaves that, literally, reached up to 20 feet into the air in some places. Heck, a small ice heave was at least a few feet tall and still required care to traverse.
Plus, if you’ve ever spent any time in northwest Ohio, you know that everything is flat, open and windswept. Well all that wind builds and carves ragged drifts of snow across the ice’s surface. Sometimes the drifts harden and freeze, sometimes they get so deep that an ATV struggles to get through them, and other times they mix with water seeping up through a crack and turn into slush. And you never know which one you’ll get when you hit a drift. The result is essentially a speed bump every 10 yards, the occasional knee-high drift that offers no traction and a handful of ATV-eating slush holes.
And about that wind, it’s only one of a series of weather elements that make Erie a dangerous place for ice fishermen. When the wind blows from the south, it can push massive sheets of ice toward Canada. So that tiny crack in the ice you drove over in the morning might be a gaping canyon at day’s end. Then you throw in current that can eat away inches of ice a day, or keep the ice from ever being safe to begin with, and temperatures that occasionally climb up into the danger zone throughout winter, and you’ve got a place for experienced ice travelers only.
Luckily, I was in good company. Ross brought along his friends Craig Schmidt, Sandy Wasmuth, Rick Catley and Tim Nesselhauf, plus a handful of other veteran ice anglers throughout our three days on Erie. All are experienced not only on ice, but on Erie’s ice, specifically.
Craig arrived with an enclosed trailer and an ATV tricked out from wheels to handlebars in equipment designed for big ice. I won’t share all the details of his rig because that’s coming next winter in the magazine, but I will say it was a sweet ride.
Sandy went one-up on Craig with an amphibious Argo. This thing had eight wheels, which Sandy outfitted with tracks, and a winch. We were riding in style. The winch came in handy more than once to pluck an ATV from some slush holes.
Rick is the owner of Rickard’s Bait and Tackle in Port Clinton, Ohio, (419.734.2496) where we bought our minnows each day. He joined us on day three, along with Tim, who hauled us out on the ice in an airboat designed specifically for the frozen water. Riding in that airboat, with its Kevlar skin and roaring engine, was an experience worth the trip itself. If you love to ice fish and haven’t been on an airboat trip, you’ve got to try it. The airboat extends the season a bit longer and adds a degree of reassurance should you encounter a dangerous situation.
That’s the short list of equipment we used. It’s hard to know where to begin to lay out all the details of how these guys prepare to ice fish on a place like Lake Erie. Anything that breaks or goes wrong could lead to disaster. An ATV that won’t start can leave you stranded miles from shore. An ATV without a winch can leave you stuck in the slush for a long time. GPS batteries that die can leave you lost in whiteout conditions (we saw whiteout weather on our last day).
I learned that you never, ever ice fish alone on the big lake. I learned that you cannot go out on the ice with stock equipment straight from the factory – everything is customized for the brutal conditions Erie dishes out (be watching for a few stories on customizing ice shanties and other gear this fall and winter). You take every precaution and, if conditions aren’t 100-percent ideal, you don’t go.
The day we left Ohio, Brian made a phone call to Ross as we were traveling south to see how the crew’s fishing was going that day. They had planned to spend another day on the lake. Turns out, they didn’t go. An ice breaker had cut a channel through the ice for, I assume, a barge to travel. Wind was blowing from the south, threatening to create a dangerous situation. I’m sure some guys went out, but it was a gamble. Ross and his friends stayed home, and they said goodbye to safe ice and the always short ice season on Lake Erie.
We had been planning a trip like this to Erie for several years now, but until this year, mild temperatures and fickle ice made it tough to fit in anything around our work schedules. This year, we had some time, got the call that the ice was good and headed out immediately. And we caught some walleyes, too, although Bryan and I were severely out-fished by our guides. Oh well, it was my first experience of this kind, and I learned a great deal about reading flashers, tempting walleyes with aggressive blade baits and spoons, and just how much cold I can take during a walleye fishing photo shoot.
We’ll be running a series of stories in Walleye magazine in 2011 about the unique requirements of ice fishing on Lake Erie, and also about fishing with blade baits, spoons and other big lures on big water. There are plenty of tricks and projects that can help you no matter where you drill through the ice.
I must say I had a blast chasing walleyes on Erie from sunup to sundown. I got more adventure in three days than I could experience in a year of sitting at my computer, editing a magazine. But I will say this: Ice fishing on Erie is like traveling to the moon, you’re happy to go, but you might be just as glad when it’s time to go home.