Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Kghunt Free Zone - Pics/Video Preferred.

No, I believe that one is by "Fish's sporting toys"

ND, you mean to tell us you didn't custom make that out from an old Chevy leaf spring??
Slacker....;)

perhaps next time. lol!

I think I made everything else in that photo set though.

The spear house, the wood stove, the spear, the 2 boys...

But I didn't make the saw, or the fish.

What's the difference between a spear house and an ice fishing hut?

Can you not spear out of your mobile home/ice fishing rig?

You eat those? I'm not even sure what that is, pike,musky,pickerel...

Our crazy/cool animals !

Fall of 1962, just south of Delta Junction, AK. I'm the runt standing beside my Mom. We were out scouting for snowshoe hares and ptarmigan.



Ed

Pike.

I eat em, I happen to really like them, especially out of cold water.

LOTS of meat.

A spear house is also known as a "dark house". There are no windows, you intentionally seal it up really well so light can't get in through the walls or ceiling.

The only light you get is through the spearing hole in the floor. Kind of a glass bottom boat sort of thing. Then you can see the fish come in.

The spear hole is bigger, often times about a 24"x 36", or bigger yet.

You hang a decoy fish down there, often made of wood with little aluminum fins that help the decoy "fly" when you give a jerk on the line to make it look alive. Sometimes we put a live bait fish down there with a weight on it to keep it down in the spear zone. We don't use hooks on the decoy or bait fish.

Usually we like to set up in 6' or shallower. It's kind of nice if you can set up shallow enough to throw the spear and be able to hold the fish against the lake bottom until it's done thrashing.

Ice fishing houses (angling) use smaller holes to fish through the ice. Typically 6" on up to 10" with an 8" hole sort of being the more popular for this area.

With the way they are building these new insulated portable ice fishing shelters these days, it is possible to spear inside a portable house, they are dark enough and big enough.

My son's spear house was sort of an exercise in tradition, right down to the wood burning stove. You really don't see that any more, the wood stoves were popular in ice fishing shacks when I was a kid, now it's all propane.

Now it all makes sense..

I remember seeing some of those ice fishing decoys for the first time on Antique Road show a long time ago. Never knew such a thing existed.

When I win the Lottery, I'm coming up there for lessons...

I have a friend who loves pike too. He fillets them and fries them.

Lots of spearing up here on the Hi Line.

Northern Dave, how do you like to fix pike?

There is an old lady up here that will pickle them if you bring them to her. Cheese, crackers beer and pickled pike is great!

Good looking dog. I have a three legged cat.

10-4, come on up.

Here's a look from the inside of one of the new style portable fishing shelters. They are much like a pop up hunting blind but typically heavier poles and fabric.



You can see how they could lend themselves useful for the whole glass bottom boat effect and spearing. Just need a different hole.

Three legged cat trying to scratch her right ear with a non-existent right leg.

Some oldies

Henry's Fork '84


Green River '88

Ya, she's a goofball for sure !

I like to bake or fry.

The kids kind of grew up on baked pike and it's made some sort of an impression on them because that is usually how they request that I cook it.

I'll do a light coating of "fry'n magic" or similar, then I'll usually wrap in foil with a little black pepper, lemon and a few pads of butter placed on top of the fillets. It flakes apart really nice, stiff texture to the meat on these pike. Sometimes I remove the Y bones, sometimes not. Depends on who I'm cooking for, some folks is too "towny" to deal with fish bones.

I'm not going to totally pee on the pickled pike idea, because I've ate a lot of it and you are correct, it is an awesome pickling meat.

But... just an FYI, pike is host to a specific parasite that some cold process pickling efforts does NOT kill, and it can be dangerous.

A hot process or freezing hard for like 48 hours prior to pickling, is key to killing the parasites.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/food/food-safety/preserving/meat-fish/pickled-fish/

I love the ice fishing pics. I'm fascinated by ice fishing. The ice seldom gets thick enough down here. You ever hear wolves out there at night?

Ed, that photo is fantastic!

I love all the old snow suits, knit mittens, scarfs!

Haha! The moms used to put scarfs on us kids all the time when we were little if we played out in the snow.

That's really high quality for a 1962 photo.

That would depend on the lake, what area we are in. (wolves)

If we fished more small lakes or at least with more terrain with little bays and forest areas... then yes.

But we mostly fish the USA portion of lake of the woods in MN, it's a big bowl, 40 miles across in some areas, surrounded by cat tails and swamp.

We hear the wolves when we are out snowmobiling at our cabin.