Ice Fishing with Lonely Boy

Hours passed without a word as I stared into my ice hole. In midday, when the sun was out, it was as clear as bathtub water. You could see your minnow (your “employee,” as they became endearingly known to Jim and me) being stalked by a lethargic walleye or northern. But as the afternoon sun dipped into the faraway trees and painted the crystallized moonscape flame orange, the ice hole shifted to a gemlike iridescent indigo, and later into a glacial cobalt before dropping off to pitch black. The only sounds were the gusting nor’easters rattling our aluminum siding and the eerie moans of massive sheets of ice twisting to get comfortable. Then, from outside the uninhabitable terrain, we heard the unlikely crunch of footsteps and a knock on the door. It was Lonely Boy.

With icicles dangling from his eyelids, he surveyed the interior of our icehouse. The décor consisted of a large propane heater and two overturned plastic buckets which we were sitting on. “Nice place,” he said, approvingly. Lonely Boy had been fishing for ten days straight, and although he was adequately supplied with food and clothes, he was starving for human contact. He pulled up a bucket and joined us for the evening bite, asking any question he could think of that would provoke verbal exchange.

“Does that heater start quick?” Lonely Boy asked. Or “Where’d you get them socks?” Or “If you were on Gilligan’s Island, would you get it on with Ginger or Mary Anne?”

The ventilation inside our icehouse was poor, and with our extra visitor, I’m sure we had inhaled unhealthy doses of carbon monoxide. The propane heater was blasting, and although the cold can creep up through the floorboards, it was feverishly hot at head level. Compound this hazy claustrophobic effect with a few beers, the standard sport drink of the ice fisherman, and we were inches away from slipping into an ice fisherman’s coma. Suddenly, the sound of a bell pierced through the viscous brain fog.

Ting-a-ling-a-ling!! Ting-a-ling-a-ling!!

With the reflexes of a napping fireman, I gave the peeling-out line a spirited yank. A strong but sluggish tug of war ensued. We pulled a chunky walleye through the hole and marveled at his golden scales. Jim snapped a photo, and then we patted our walleye on the head and sent him back through the toilet-bowl sized porthole to his frigid domain in the icy underworld.

“You think that fish will remember us?” Lonely Boy asked.

About 2 am, we packed up to leave. As always, I chronicled the day’s events in pencil on one of the supporting beams: February 21. Cold and windy. (Brrrrrr!!) Drank five beers. Fished the evening bit with Lonely Boy. Caught one nice walleye.

As we drove off the ice in Jim’s truck, I looked behind us. There was Lonely Boy, standing on the middle of a frozen lake in the middle of the night, waving good-bye.