A shiver runs through it

An investigation into the chilliest of Adirondack adventures

Illustration by Jerry Russell

By Michael Gormley

Robert Redford does not do movies about ice fishing. Hemingway never wrote about the big two-hearted frozen lake. Not even Jack London in his tales of hellish winters in the Yukon dared explore the jig, the tip-up or the shanty.

It could be that those of us who don heavy leather boots and parkas to fish the frozen tide see art before the artist. It could be that our soul-stretching triumph over the elements is beyond the language.

Or it could be that we’re nuts.

The thought does cross your mind, a half-mile from shore on a January dawn as you screw a dull auger into two feet of Adirondack ice. Sweating despite the thermometer’s lonely reading, you can’t help but ponder whether your heart is pounding a little too strong or the ice is cracking a little too loud.

But soon, you relax. You assure yourself that you’ve prepared well, that you know your limits, and that you’d probably die of hypothermia well before you got to shore anyway. Not that anyone would be there to help in the middle of a jaw-clattering Adirondack winter.

That’s why there’s the buddy system. Unfortunately, your buddies are all on couches watching fly-fishing shows from Bermuda on ESPN. They promised, however, that the minute you fail to show up for work Monday, they’ll be sure to make a few calls.

You see, ice fishing isn’t what you’d call a social activity. There are no notices on the company bulletin boards like: “Hey! Join the Gang on Abanakee Lake as We Ice Fish for Charity!” It’s not that ice fishermen are, well, cold. It’s just that it’s hard to be charitable when you’re already seriously concerned about the future of your toes.

So while you might see a few dozen anglers fishing the hard water, you won’t see many of them together. Oh, they might all be a couple hundred yards from shore, and all within a loud whisper of each other, but most will be sitting quietly, hunched on their upturned plastic buckets, backs to each other, and the world.

That’s not to say ice fishing is an anti-social activity. There’s a bond among those who ice-fish, braving together the cold, the biting wind, the isolation. Here’s the perfect setting to be emotionally vulnerable, to talk about our insecurities.

“What a week,” sighs one sensitive angler.

“Uh-huh,” shares the other.

It’s enough to bring a tear to your eye.

It may not sound like much of a catharsis to those who cower indoors from December to March, but somehow the shrugs, grunts, and evading of subjects that don’t involve Mickey Mantle, coffee or Gore-Tex carry a deeper emotional tone on the ice.

Hey, you can’t sit on a plastic bucket for hours in 20-degree weather without stumbling over an insight or two.

To indoorsmen who all think ice fishermen are crazy, the men and women of the ice are simply sitting in the middle of a desolate lake, talking to no one, doing absolutely nothing for hours, without family, without even a phone.

But look at it from the ice fishermen’s point of view: They’re sitting in the middle of a desolate lake, talking to no one, doing absolutely nothing for hours, without family, without even a phone.

This is a bare-bones affair. It’s not like fly-fishing, for which Redford’s movie A River Runs Through It created a fanatical following waving gold cards. For fly-fishing, you need a sport utility vehicle just to carry all the designer clothing, rubber booties and the squadron of gaudy artificial flies neatly arranged and resembling nothing in nature. In ice fishing, you can carry everything you need in a plastic bucket, then sit on the bucket.

And then there’s the ice shanty. The shanty is a cross between a comfortable cabin and something you wouldn’t terribly mind see sink into the lake during a thaw. Some are elaborate, but most are decorated in the motif of the Racoon Lodge in the old Honeymooners show. Many include small wood stoves for heat, coffee and lunch.

Ice fishermen are fond of giving advice. You’ll hear treatises on everything from dressing in layers to the strategy of placing a series of tip-up rods at holes where you aren’t jigging. Jigging—that’s the lingo for the raising and lowering the Swedish Pimple, Mousie, Jig-a-Whopper or live bait at the end of your line.

Oh, and old-timers are quick to recommend ignoring that godawful cracking sound up and down the lake. It seems to be about a foot below where you stand in heavy clothing, threatening to stake you under and turn you into a Jig-a-Whopper. You’re just about to die a horrible Titanic death, hopefully without the music.

Or not.

You see, that regular cracking from ice formation and shifting is nature’s running gag with ice fishermen. It’s all part of the tradition of the winter worship that goes back for generations of men and women with strong constitutions, good boots, and bad marriages.

But here’s the bottom line. Ask those poor souls who spent their winter weekend inside what they did on their days off and most will tell you: “Nothing.”

Ask an ice fisherman, and he’ll tell you about an adventure.

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