Snapshots: The Army Goes Ice Fishing*

(I dropped the "Sunday" in the title because it was just too long, but rest assured, it will still be on Sundays. I know you were worried.)

"Hold up," you say. "Ice fishing? In New Mexico? Land of enchantment and incredibly strong winter sun? Surely that's not safe."

Ah, but you (and I) forget: We have very, very high mountains in New Mexico. And the altitude makes up for the sun when it comes to cold weather. Oddly enough, there are places in New Mexico that have very early and safe ice for ice fishing. Far safer even than upstate New York, where A. meant to go ice fishing every year and always seemed to miss the small window of time with safe ice.

In fact, the last time he actually went ice fishing was the time we all went. When "all" of us was only A., me, Cubby, and Charlie, because it was almost exactly seven years ago.

Because A. has been meaning to go for years, he actually already had an ice auger (a large screw for drilling the fishing hole down through the ice) and the small rods typically used for ice fishing. He bought three of them when we were living in far northern New York, and those rods, still in their packaging, plus the never-used auger, moved here with us along with the snowshoes.

The showshoes have actually been used right here by our house, and now the fishing rods and auger have been used, too.

To use those, though, we had to drive to the mountains. There's a small lake in the Rocky Mountains about two hours from us that has safe ice, so that's where we headed on Friday. The forecast there was for a high of 40 degrees, with partial cloud cover. And I thought, "Partial cloud cover? In the middle of a lake where there will probably be wind? Oh man, this is gonna be COLD."

I know, you see, that all of the heat in this state in the winter comes from the sun. It can feel like a spring day any day of the winter if the sun is out. As soon as the sun is blocked, though, it becomes winter again.

Therefore, I prepared the children for real winter. Everyone wore wool socks, long underwear, and wool sweaters, and I had an entire big laundry basket in the car with all the coats, gloves, hats, and extra clothes in case anyone got wet.

But then, when we arrived at the lake, there was literally not a cloud to be seen.

Well, hello, famously blue winter sky of New Mexico!

We were at an elevation of a little over 8,000 feet, and that sun was glaring down like a heat lamp on rotisserie chickens. Within fifteen minutes, we had all removed our coats. 

They made excellent blankets for sitting on.

A. found a previously drilled hole near the shore that had frozen over and decided to re-drill that one to save himself some work. He put his auger in, cranked it one turn, and . . . it broke. Yes, on the very first turn. A. has a history of breaking hand tools--he's just too strong for a lot of them--but that was ridiculous.

The little pin that attaches the handle to the screw snapped off, so he trudged back to the car to see if he could find something to replace the pin. 

He didn't, but a family parked next to us in the parking lot had an ax in the back of their car that they graciously allowed A. to use, so he brought that back along with a tire iron. With those two items, he managed to open up two holes.

Laboriously.

While he was engaged in manually chopping out eight inches of ice--which, by the way, NO ONE does--a guy went past us pulling a sled with his own ice-fishing gear. He offered to let A. use his manual auger after he was done drilling his own holes.

So A. did, and thankfully didn't break the borrowed auger while drilling out three more holes.

Then five poles (three ice-fishing poles, and two regular poles) were baited and dropped in five holes, and the fishing commenced.

One nice thing about ice fishing is that the holes are too small for children to fall into, so there's no possibility of drowning.

There is a 100% possibility of wet mittens, however.

After getting her mittens wet--and getting bored of sitting by the hole--Poppy wanted to go back to the car. The actual fishing had just started, however, so we made her a nest on the ice, instead.

Daddy's coat and a wool blanket make an excellent sleeping bag.

Cubby had a big fish on his line at one point that cut the line--there are pike in this lake, and they have sharp teeth--but there wasn't much action at first.

With the exception of coming out to eat her picnic lunch, Poppy pretty much stayed there in her makeshift sleeping bag. At one point, she asked me to go check "her" fishing rod. It was only about ten feet away, and I could see that it hadn't moved, but I told her I would. 

So I went over to it. No sign of activity. But just so I could assure her that I had really checked it, I reached out to pick it up and test for any tension on the line. And literally JUST as I was about to touch the handle, it jerked.

How did she know?

I grabbed the rod, of course, but also of course surrendered it immediately to A. for the actual landing (icing?) of the fish. Because what do I know about landing a fish? Absolutely nothing. And it turns out you have to know quite a bit to land a fish from under the ice.

A. spent several minutes playing the fish, letting it get a bit worn out before he tried to pull it out of the hole. 

With a rapt audience, of course.

He did manage to get it up and out eventually, and Poppy got to pose with "her" fish.

A nice big rainbow trout.

Catching a fish revitalized her and then she was happy to be out playing.

Mostly with the fish.

A. was really jazzed to have caught such a big fish. I was happy we caught anything at all and was about ready to pack it in. But then, as A. was just finishing up with gutting that trout and was going over to check some of the lines, the pole in that same hole started to move and, before he could get to it, was pulled right into the hole and out of reach.

Bummer.

That close call made A. more determined than ever to fish a little longer. So we decided to stay until 2:15 p.m. 

I had made a joke about how Poppy must have heard the fish coming, because she was lying down on the ice, so Cubby and Charlie went over to their poles and lay down next to them. Charlie told me he was "talking" to the fish, too, to encourage them to take his bait. Okay.

There was no more excitement and at our agreed-upon time, A. started to go around to the holes and pull in the lines.

He left Cubby's and Charlie's poles to the end, and just as he was about to go over there, Charlie got a hit.

I guess he has a mind-meld with the fish?

In any case, Cubby was closer than A., so he grabbed the pole and, with A.'s guidance, worked on landing  this one.

Success!

It was a good thing Cubby was managing the pole while A. waited to get the fish out of the water, because this was a bigger fish and broke the line juuuust as it was coming up out of the water. A. had hold of the line with one hand, felt it break, and instinctively smacked the fish with his other hand out onto the ice.

It was really funny. I wish I had a video of A. slapping the fish out.

We measured that one, and it was a 17-inch rainbow trout.

Charlie the fish-whisperer and his fish.

I called a halt at this high point and we packed up and went back to the van to make our weary way home.

We got home just in time for a slightly delayed dinner. Of course, we had fish.

Doesn't get much fresher than this.

All in all, a day for the books. (Or rather, the blog.)

* The reason I used this title is because as we were getting back into the van, another ice fisherman noted our full vehicle and said, "You really got an army there." Yup. Sounds about right.