January 12, 2016 - Tuesday evening

-3 degrees/clear/windy

Pentoga Road

I thought I'd begin to write this evening, especially since I ran out of time this morning. We'll see how much is finished before bedtime. Whatever is left will have to wait until tomorrow morning.

I skipped today's walk in favor of going fishing. It was cold, well below zero, and I shivered as I walked the quarter mile, bent into a wind that was gusting hard out of the north. 

It took a while for my hands to regain feeling after rubbing them together in front of the small propane burner. I'd fumbled with the lock and key longer than planned and was almost to the point of turning around and walking back to the car. I finally got the moisture inside the padlock melted and the key inserted.

Taken Monday morning

I guess I should back up just a bit. The ice shack was hauled out on Monday morning. I tried one place for a while with no action. Growing impatient, I towed it to another, one where I caught large crappies and bluegills three years ago.

Unloaded from the trailer and ready to pull onto the lake.

I was encouraged by Tuesday's results. Though I only caught one crappie, the first of the year, I could see on the sonar there were plenty of fish down deep. Getting them to hit was another matter. At least I've located them and know I'm in the right general vicinity.

The sonar is an inexpensive one meant to use on a boat in open water. With very little modification and a bit of imagination, I adapted it for ice fishing. It works well.

The fish were slow to bite. I could see the crappies rising towards my small jig, but pay it very little lip service then slowly swim away.

In the end, I caught the one crappie, two keeper bluegills, a decent perch, and lost a large northern that wrapped the line around the transducer sticking down into the water and pulled the small crappie jig from its mouth.

A bass that is too small and out of season

Wednesday morning - January 13, 2016

-8 degrees/clear/breezy

Pentoga Road

I slept like a rock last night until the sound of the furnace running awakened me early this morning. It was time to get the fire going, put on the coffee, and start the day. 

I've been having trouble with my toes during this current bout of cold weather. Years ago, in the arctic, I was caught out in some of the coldest temperatures Alaska has ever recorded, -76 degrees (that's 76 below zero) with 40 mph winds. That made the windchill something like a hundred thousand degrees below zero. In fact, it was so cold that even Barrow cancelled school that day, but that's a story for another time. (By the way, at -76, a Craftsman wrench will shatter like glass. I found that out the hard way.)

For me, the end result was that my toes were badly frostbitten along with other areas of my body. For awhile, it was uncertain whether several of my toes, fingers, and face and nose, would regain any circulation and live to see another day. My face was so frozen that one doctor began talking about skin grafts. In the end, everything recovered to one extent or another, but there are still ramifications, one being the issue of my toes. When the weather gets frigid and my feet become the cold, my extremities tend to swell and become extremely sensitive.

Frozen tootsies, in the past or the present, aren't for sissies.

Page Two

I arrived home before noon on Tuesday and started the heater in the shop. I get tired of carrying my ice fishing equipment to the ice shack while pulling some of the heavier stuff on a slippery little orange plastic sled. Either my hands get tired and frozen or something slips off the sled. It was time to take action.

I purchased a couple pairs of old skis from the local thrift store last year for $3 a pair in anticipation of someday making something from them.

I began making a frame from 2x6's, dug into a pile of inexpensive, treated, dog-ear fencing material, and went from there.

I enjoyed the several hours spent making the sled. The temperature inside the shop before any heat was 21 degrees (-7 outside), but with the solar heater and propane burner combination, it quickly climbed to a comfortable 60 degrees. 

The only difficulty in building the sled was designing something where I could mount the heavy ice auger on one side without the entire thing tipping over. 

I found the best solution was to simply make it wide enough that the weight was balanced. While I was playing around with weight and balances, I also added a bracket on the opposite side for the chisel to mount. I'll put the sled through its paces later on this morning when I venture out to the ice shack.

I didn't get into the house until minutes before Sargie arrived home last night. We spent the evening in front of the wood stove watching television and catching up on the day's happenings.

Sargie opens this morning, but has tomorrow off. I'm going to head back out to the ice shack first thing this morning and see how serious those crappies and bluegills really are about being caught. This afternoon should find me doing laundry, running the vacuum sweeper, dusting a bit, and taking care of piggies so they don't go to market.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Yooper Brother Mark's daughter, Sarah, now living in Wyoming, has commented how much she misses home and how she loves to see fish pictures on the webpage. Here's another of the many bass I've caught over the past two days.