Hello friends,

    For the first time since 1989 I am going to write to you over two separate weeks, two different ways of describing the same trip. I just returned from an ice fishing/camping trip that was 2.8 miles from shore on Lake Superior on Chequamegon Bay out of Ashland. This week's column will be the safe trip, next weeks will be survival at its best.  Space does not allow both the same week.

Friday, March 10^th

High 33, low 24

    Doug Cibulka and I drove up to Ashland on snow covered roads pulling my 12-foot trailer with gear and my Polaris snowmobile in it.  This winter very few trucks are on Chequamegon Bay, at first it was due to poor ice, now it is because of 20-inches of hard pack snow on the ice.

    Doug and I are high school buddies along with Jeff Moll who would be joining us well after dark. Two trips pulling 4 sleds 2.8 miles, along with Doug and my golden retrievers Ruby and Red the second trip made for a workload for the Polaris 550 Classic.

    Kind of bad luck came my way when before we started building camp we were both setting out tip ups, Doug was using his electric auger, I was using my propane. I did not know it but the pin that attaches the powerhead to the auger had come out and my auger and was free from the power head.  First, I about broke my wrist trying to stop the power head from spinning and then the pull cord came out and the handle smacked me in the jaw.  It was like a really good punch. It took 35 minutes for my auger to run out of propane and I have never seen Mr. Cibulka laugh so hard.

    At 9:30 p.m. Mr. Moll let us know he was on his way with his Bearcat, and I met him, we had elk roast for supper and a whole lot of laughs.

Saturday, March 11^th

High 29, low 22

    There was a forecast of a bad storm to hit today and everyone left the ice but us, I will save that for next week. So first thing this morning we are jigging with Hailey’s jigs and wax worms and using tip ups for anything from gators to brown trout, splake or coho. The jigs are catching us perch and smelt and right away I caught a coho on my jig pole which was very cool.

    No more than a half hour later I caught a splake on a tip up and everything was perfect in our world, at least mine. This is the 4^th year in a row that we have done this adventure and usually we catch quite a few northern pike and brown trout but none today. About noon the wind started picking up, we were using two, Eskimo "Fat Shacks' which were both 13x8 in size and we anchored them down as well as possible.

    We also had a problem in that the ice was flooding around our camp causing the floor inside of our shacks to have 3-inches of water. Towards dark you could say the storm had hit real hard and our situation became very dicey.  Mr. Moll caught 2 burbot we had a whole bunch of smelt and perch and also a lot of fun.

    Next week its pass or fail, do or die!