Still better than Tucson

I’m a little torn.

It’s so cold I have no interest in going outside.

On the other hand, it’s cold, so it’s making ice and that means I should be outside -- fishing.

I’ve never been much of an ice fisherman. It seems to require a lot of patience, of which I have little. But I own a cabin on a lake, and I have a friend of good Minnesota stock who revels in fishing through the ice.

Mike has all the gear and all the knowledge so I have no excuse. He even sets me up so I can watch the tip-ups with binoculars from inside the cabin.

If the flag’s up, I slip into my boots, throw on a jacket, and trudge down the hill and out onto the frozen lake where I pull in the fish, take a few second to admire it before it freezes, and then retreat to the warmth of the cabin.

Mike is determined to make an ice fisherman of me yet so we’re going to try spearing this winter. We’ll cut a large hole in the ice, set the shelter over it and sit inside with spears poised, waiting for pike to swim within range.

With snow packed up against the bottom of the shelter to block out the light, the hole lights up like a television. Or so I’m told. Anyway, it sounds cool, something I might enjoy, a bit more like hunting than fishing, and it’s inside, out of the wind and the miles of frozen desolation that stretch in every direction.

In the dark of the icehouse I can pretend to be somewhere else, somewhere warm.

It’s not shaping up to be as cold this week as predicted. A forecast of 30 below has been adjusted to a mere -20, a temperature that’s almost tolerable. Disturbingly, I seem to be able to better handle cold temperatures as I get older instead of the other way around.

I thought by now I’d be wintering in Arizona with all those other just-couldn’t-take-the-cold-anymore folk, but no, I’m going fishing on the ice.

I hope to get hooked. I understand ice fishing can be terribly addictive, but right now I’m just nibbling at the bait.

I pulled a good pike from the hole at the cabin last year, and caught a three-foot laker nearby the year before.

It’s got my attention.

And what else is there to do this time of year? Move to Tuscon?

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected].