ICE FISHING

“It’s really heavy,” I tell him, now fighting to bring in the line. I picture a deep-sea tuna on the other end, swimming fast in the opposite direction — either that or a long lost pirate ship. But soon, I’ve tuckered out my opponent and the line comes in. The beast lands on the wooden floor with a faint thud.

Determined to catch something worth eating, Greg and I settle in at the fishing hole and jig as we’ve never jigged before. Soon, we notice some movement, and reeling in our lines, we see that something is nibbling on our minnows. The lines go slack, and we find that the minnows have vanished. At least someone is getting breakfast, I think. Greg rebaits my line (by this time, we’ve discovered he’s much better at it than I am, mostly because he doesn’t mind taking his gloves off to do it), and it starts to jump and twitch almost as soon as it hits the water. I tug and yank at the line, feeling the fish struggling against it.

“It’s huge,” I shriek at Greg, who gives me a doubtful glance.

“As huge as the perch?” he asks dryly.

“No, really huge! Gimme a hand!”

The fish sends a cold spray up toward us, then emerges with an open mouth almost the width of the hole, looking rather prehistoric and causing us to step back in muted horror. But we quickly regroup and, amid much giggling and swearing, retrieve it from the water and toss it to the floor to take a good look. It is huge: a pike as long as Grandma’s rolling pin with dark speckling along its sides and an orange- and yellow-striped tail. A fish that would have made Grandpa proud.

Later that day, we’re back at Glen Echo with all six holes going, eager to repeat our luck of the morning. A neighbour drops by, having heard that the city boys finally caught something. He introduces himself as Louis Reiderer and asks whether we intend to eat the fish, explaining that many fishermen don’t bother with pike because their two extra spinelike bones make them difficult to fillet. He offers to clean it for us, ensuring that we won’t have to resort to barbecuing hamburgers two nights in a row and solving the dilemma of what we would do with the fish given that it was too late to release it and taxidermy seemed a little over the top.

I follow Reiderer up the hill to his house, trailed by four or five white-tailed deer. Thanks to his skill with a knife, the pike produces four fillets the size of my hand and four small fish-stick-sized pieces, which I pan-fry with butter and salt and pepper back in our ice bungalow later that night.

It reminds me of the sunfish and rock bass fish I’d caught with Grandpa, pulled fresh from the lake and gutted and scaled out back in his shop. I think he’d be pleased, not just because I caught something but because I took such an unlikely trip and had a lot of fun — a part I’d forgotten about. Amid the cold and the endless waiting, there’s a luxury to being stuck on a frozen lake far away from the usual distractions, with nothing else to do but spend some quiet time with people you love.

Bruce Gillespie is a writer and editor in Simcoe, Ont. Photographer Harry Nowell lives in Cantley, Que.