Ice fishing away the day with friends

Driving onto the lake seems unsettling as ice shifts and fishers navigate around thinly frozen-over ‘potholes’ of old fishing holes.

Some people go ice fishing with archery bow or special permit spear and keep what they catch. Others sit back in warm boots and relax in lawn chairs with their poles dangling.

Sipping Red Bull, Rodger Souvery from Ponoka, and Matt ‘Joe Dirt’ Stewart and Trevor Willerton from Lacombe, were hunched over their three-leafed-holes at Gull Lake at Brownlow Landing near Bentley.

They had staked out their turf with their ice fishing black tent on a cold sunny day Dec. 29, jigging away.

The fish weren’t coming when called, but the guys weren’t perplexed.

Having fewer catches so far in the season than the other two guys, Willerton was quieter, tending to his line. “I’m out here for relaxation.”

He said they had been out for nearly 10 hours the previous day, having combined on their daily limit of five fish each. Souvery caught a monster Northern Pike the week before.

“We were screaming like school boys,” Willerton said about the 43-inch Northern Pike that came out of nowhere. Souvery weighed it at 19 lbs.

After photographing Souvery with a grin almost as wide as the slippery shining catch, they returned the toothy titan into the frigid waters.

“It’s a breeder so I put ’em back,” Souvery explained.

With a sunny day and thickening ice, nearly 100 people, some having set up shacks at the beginning of the season, staked claims around the lake near the shore.

“It’s like a friggin’ town on ice,” observed Souvery.

Though it was near plus temperatures, the guys said the tents and shacks stay cosy in -30 degrees C weather with small propane heaters.

“It’s like T-shirt weather inside. If the ice is three-feet-thick, some people will have a bonfire on the ice,” Souvery said.

Serious fishers sit poised with hands on the reel awaiting the next bite, staying the whole day if the fish are in a biting mood — until it’s five o’clock somewhere.

Some guys take a break and zoom around on quads and snowmobiles.

“Some old fishermen say you gotta be quiet, but the fish don’t even flinch with trucks and quads roaring around all day. This ain’t hunting,” said Stewart.

The only other noises are distant Jiffy ice drills chiseling new holes and excited yells of encouragement.

“If we hear a big diesel truck going by too close, a crack will go right through your hole and it makes me crap my pants,” said Stewart, who swims well and is worried only about hypothermia.

Another primeval-looking pike looms into view on the fish camera screen and the guys cease conversation, jigging away at their lines.

Stewart has a deep-sea salmon flasher lure he swears by, but whatever is attracting the fish is good enough.

He said a Newfoundlander friend was luckier than Souvery.

“He had the pole sitting there, lazyman fishing, and something bit good. When I went to grab it, he said, ‘Let’ter sit,’” Stewart recounts.

Three minutes later, as the fish jerked the multi-hook line around, Stewart said the East Coaster still hadn’t reeled it in, repeating, ‘Just let’ter lay.’

“Then he pulls up not one trout, but two. I rarely seen that happen, and never like he did it, twice in one night,” said Stewart.

Though it was almost a new moon, the day before had yielded a good catch as Stewart swears Souvery possessed an aura that drew a pile of fish to him.

“Frick yeah. Don’t think the lunar pull of gravity doesn’t have some effect on the fish,” Stewart said, though he thinks he keeps the fish from biting.

“Whenever I’m not on the lake, you’re good to fish,” he said.

Part superstition, part skill, these guys had few fish to show for the morning and blamed Souvery for dropping his hook into the water before give proper sacrifice to the fishing gods.

“Just spit and shine. I cleaned up the shiner and caught something right away,” said Souvery, with the only two catches of the day.

His homemade series of jig hooks and flashers helped him catch a perch.

The day before, he reeled in a half dozen perch from a school of the small, tasty fish ready for the skillet.

“It’s barrel fishing when there was a dozen and I keep pulling ’em up. I hit the perch good,” Souvery said.

The trio attended their lines and tried to guess which of their fishing poles would get a nibble next. They also had some early warning from a 360-degree rotatable fish camera’s screen.

“It’s a false hope camera, really. Stop nipping at the camera and nip on my hook,” he said, as a medium-sized pike attempted to gnaw on the camera’s underwater housing.

The camera’s motion sensor followed the pike as it lazily swims past the hooks and back out of sight in the cold green water.

“Watching today is frustrating when they ain’t buying what you’re selling so we keep getting jiggy with it,” said Souvery.

Catching some time off from work, the guys are able to relax on the lake.

“It’s all about time to yourself when there’s nothing else that needs doing. I can leave the wife and kid at home and stay out of trouble here,” said Souvery.

More serious fishermen sleep in their wooden shacks for the weekend to be up early and only pull up roots when the season ends in March.

As long as they keep hauling up fish, the fishers will keep coming back for more winter barbecue treats.

Souvery soon pulled in another perch and the thrill of fishing continues.