When it’s cold enough for playing hooky with real hooks

Some people say I’m a bit crazy, but I’ll argue that passion is frequently misunderstood as such.

Take, for example, today. I had to drive my lovely bride to the Plattsburgh airport to fly down to Florida to see her mother. The day started at 5 a.m. Normally, I wouldn’t crawl out of bed at that time of day for anything other than some wonderful outdoor adventure. Now, most of us are aware of this year’s winter being a bit colder than we’ve experienced for a long time.

When I was 15 years old and living in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pa., I dreamt of living in Vermont. I love the cold, but no one around me did.

Come November, everyone would start complaining about the weather for the next four months, whilst I, in my juvenile rebellious stage, would get dropped off at school, go in the front door, walk through the halls past my homeroom and out the backdoor, where my equally rebellious friend, Ronny, would meet me with his car loaded with our ski equipment. Then we would drive two and half hours north to a small mountain in Erie, Pa., ski all day and be home in time for supper. If there was snow on the ground within 100 miles, I was not going to sit in an overheated classroom with a bunch of whiners.

At 16, I announced that I wanted to finish high school in Vermont. I was thinking about this today, because after dropping my wife off at the airport, I headed back through the Islands in search of “good ice.” Just like I had in my childhood, I had packed the trunk of the car the night before with all my ice-fishing equipment.

I arrived at a bay that had been recommended for catching sunfish. I rationalized that I was doing this for my wife because they are one of the few fish she can eat from Lake Champlain.

Upon arrival at the bay, I saw at least a dozen other piscatorial delinquents a half mile offshore. Several of them had driven trucks and cars to their location in the bay so I knew the ice must be thick enough for me, even though I weigh about as much as the front bumper of a Volkswagen beetle.

I bundled myself up in the access area, donning my flotation bibs and coat. I pulled my favorite camouflage fleece balaclava around my neck and over my baseball hat, then pulled the hood of my jacket over them both. I attached my ice creepers to my insulated boots and grabbed my jet sled with the cordless drill auger, my backpack with hot coffee and tackle, my hiking poles, and off I went.

As I crunched through the snow and ground the heels of the crampons into the dark black patches of clear ice, I became aware of the wind. It was coming from the southeast and was pushing 20-25 mph, whipping a snowy froth over my suit. I took out my phone to check the temperature — 16 degrees with a wind chill of minus 10. And here I was half a mile from shore and grinning like the town idiot.

I augured a hole in the clear black ice and watched in amazement as my auger kept digging deeper and deeper until the entire spiraling shaft disappeared under the solid surface. It was a bit of a struggle to retrieve it, as I plunged the hole to get the ice chips out.

I looked down at the hole and used my scoop to catch the errant ice chips to remove them. With my hand on the handle of the scoop, I couldn’t reach the bottom of the hole. Without a measuring device, it had to be at least 20 inches thick. This left me to wonder “how much water is actually under all this ice?” I sat down on my pickle bucket with the padded seat and dropped a 3-pound monofilament line with a tiny bibbit (i.e., micro lure) with a couple of live spikes on the hook. For the uninitiated, “spikes” are maggots that are stored in small plastic tins with sawdust, and the fish love them.

The line dropped down to the bottom and went slack. About 9 feet. Reeling up just one half a turn on the reel, I set the line taught.

I began moving the rod tip up and down gently and in a short motion just above the bottom. I watched the tip carefully. The wind was moving it in small vibrations from side to side. Then, an almost imperceptible tug downward.

I waited patiently. Another tug and then a heavier one. I raised my rod and the tip bent toward the icy hole with gusto. I began reeling it up, wondering what kind of fish it might be. Soon, it came up through the hole and at that very moment, the sun came out from behind me and lit up the magnificent colors on the small but precious being. I looked at it in wonder and gratitude.

I stayed another hour and caught a dozen small yellow perch, returning them all to grow another year and then began the long pull back to the access. As I was walking through the snow drifts and over the sheer black ice patches, the wind was blowing snow on my face. The frigid air wrapped itself around me. Inside my heavily insulated flotation suit, I was incredibly cozy and warm.

I thought of my childhood friends back in Beaver, Pa., and started to laugh aloud. A powerful grin arced across my face as I thought, “They must think I’m crazy, but I love this!”

I am where I am meant to be, and although I can’t claim to be a “real Vermonter” (it takes seven or more generations for that honor to be given to any family), I am crazy enough to be one.

(Bradley Carleton is executive director of Sacred Hunter.org, a privately owned limited liability corporation that seeks to educate the public on the spiritual connection of man to nature through hunting, fishing and foraging. His writing may be followed Substack.)