My friends and I made it out for our first ice fishing excursion yesterday. Since our favorite form of relaxing/getting away is to do outdoors things, we thought it would be a fun sport to try. We stayed out until well after dark and got off the ice around 6:30. Unfortunately, we caught nothing. Which, honestly, didn’t bother me. I didn’t want to go out ice fishing for the first time, and hit our limit of 25 fish a piece, and then be disappointed.

So, ice fishing is basically exactly what you'd expect. Drill a hole in the ice, sit and wait until you catch a fish. The fun part (aside from fishing if you get something) is the campfire, talking, Smores and craziness. Standard stuff.

We also had a little mini hut thing, that you can sit in with a heater and fish for hours. When we went it wasn't overly cold and we had a fire so didn't really use it. I can imagine if it was much colder or there was more snow, it would be pretty important.



I had been on solidly frozen water once in my life, during a particularly cold winter a few years back. The creek on the small plot of land my parents owned froze up. We sort of ice skated, and my best friend fell and split his head open. So, I am not used to large expanses of ice. Turns out, it pops and cracks, which is the coolest sound ever. As it got darker/colder, the ice shrank after having sun on it all day, and you could feel it crack. Awesome and nerve wracking at the same time.

Six inches of ice seems pretty thick.

We’re hoping to make it out onto a less-populated spot sometime in the near future, but the weather will dictate that. Hopefully we do finally catch some fish though!