First Ice

Serenity one minute. Heart-pounding ecstasy the next. For an outdoorsy guy, there’s nothing like fishing on first ice.

On Devils Pond, first ice is glass-smooth and sky blue. I drill my hole and sit down on my ice bucket stock-still—the fish below can hear everything. Whenever a walleye swims by a couple-few times, first ice is so clear, I can count his scales.

If I’m lucky enough to hook a two-footer, I know I’ve caught one smart fish. Big fish get big for a reason. They’ve learned how to maneuver around more than one of my fancy-dandy lures for at least eight or ten years.

A walleye may tear off a bunch of line before I can get the head started. But once he starts pulling, I hear that line whirring by and adrenaline surges through my body. It's a rush like no other.

When I was in my early teens, I used to invite some of the younger kids hanging around the pond to come out onto the ice and fish, so they’d grow up with it and learn to love it like I did.

"Come on, I'll show you how," I'd say. "You won't catch any fish standing on the shore."

“No way, weirdo,” they’d say. “We don’t want to get swallowed up by the lake monster.”

Nonsense. That was nothing but a myth, silly old hooey.

In North Dakota, if you’re keen to fish, you have to go ice fishing. For one, local ordinances say you must throw back most of the fish you catch in warm weather. For another, for five months out of the year, all the lakes around here are frozen solid.

When we were kids, Mom used to take my brother Will and me out on Devils Pond. Most everyone still called it a pond, but when I was in kindergarten, the Army Corps of Engineers came to town and widened it into a big lake, to attract more tourists. Right about that time, rumors began circulating that the engineers dug a prehistoric monster out of the primordial mud, which began lurking in the deepest part of the lake, waiting for human prey.

Mom discounted those rumors and took us out ice fishing several times a year in spite of them. Besides making it bigger, the engineers stocked it with more fish and more kinds of fish, too.

With all these new fish in it, we'd make a day on the ice at old Devils Pond. Then we’d haul everything back to the pickup and cook our catch right on the tailgate. You never tasted anything as delicious in your life as fresh-caught fish roasted over an open flame.

If ice fishing is a thing your family does together, you develop a lifelong passion for it. You catch a fat perch or a three-foot pike bigger than you, and even if it takes three people to haul it in through that foot-wide hole, your heart swells as big as the lake monster's (assuming creepy made-up creatures got hearts to begin with).

While we were in grade school, Mom never took us out on first ice. The ice had to be plenty thick everywhere and other fishermen had to be in plain sight. Now that we’re grown, Will and I head out together on first ice, with as much room between us as we can get, out 50 feet or more where the lake herring spawn and plenty of other big fish are feeding on them.

Truth be told, the more you ice fish, the more likely you’re gonna fall in, at least once. I’m pretty careful, but sometimes I take more chances than Mom would like, maybe setting up too close to some underwater springs or a bubbler.

But the risk is worth it. I get so hungry for walleye grilled and just plain itchy to get on the ice, usually around mid- to late November, that I have to fish. The ice may be four inches thick in some spots and barely two inches in others. That's a reality ice fisherman face for a good day's catch.

When Will was 18 and I was barely 20, the day before Thanksgiving, we headed out to Devils Pond for our first ice fishing of the season. We slept in the truck, piling into our sleeping bags, waking before sunrise. Then we loaded up the buckets with everything we needed to catch us some walleye. What equipment we would actually need that day, we never would've guessed and never could've brought along in my rusty old 4x4.

We set up near the middle of the lake about40 feet apart, so as not to poach each other. With the sun below the horizon, it was bone-chilling cold. We drilled our holes, set our lines, and hunkered down on the ice, taking in the warmth and beauty of the valley as the sun was coming up.

I was switching lures between each fish I caught. First, I put on a spooner and hooked a 17” walleye inside ten minutes. While tying on my famous sticky-sharp hook, that’s when it happened. The ice shuddered beneath my feet and cracked with a boom that knocked me off my feet.

“Help! Will!” I hollered before crashing into the lake.

I never fished with gloves on, so I was able to grab the spikes around my neck and jab them into the ice above me, holding on. Before I knew it, Will’s giant hand reached down to yank me halfway out of that frigid water. I managed to pull myself out the rest of the way.

I struggled for breath. “Jeez, that was close,” I muttered, immobile as I sprawled on the ice. The freezing water had turned my legs into blocks of concrete.

“Let’s pack up. Come back another time." Will said. "Plenty of season left.”

“Yeah, gotta get warmed up now. Love you, man.”

"Forget it," he said.

Before I could gather my gear, another crack thundered beneath the surface. While struggling to my knees, a pitch-black monstrosity with blood-red eyes crashed through the ice. From nose to tail, it looked as long as the widest part of the lake. The monster grabbed Will in his alligator jaws and disappeared through the first ice.

I must’ve passed out. When I regained my senses, I scanned the ice for Will. I called for him, over and over. Nothing. So, I abandoned my gear and hurried to shore as fast as my cement legs could get me there, finally hauling myself up into the cab of my truck. Dazed and shivering violently, I dialed 9-1-1.

“9-1-1. What’s your emergency?”

“This monster…” I blubbered. “It crashed through the ice and took my brother. I c-can't find him.”

“Slow down, sir. Who took your brother? Where are you?”

That was five years ago. Every November since, the story goes that my brother’s face will suddenly appear under the ice, his bright blue eyes wide with panic as a huge black serpent’s jaws close around his neck.

Mom never believed me that a sea creature, like some kind of freshwater Jaws, seized Will and dragged him under. She called me a lyin’, crazy, cowardly sonuvabitch. She said I made up some fantastical story because I was too gutless to save my own flesh-and-blood after Will risked his own life to save mine.

I never get out on the ice anymore. Whenever I close my eyes, I see Will’s face under that ice, being tortured by that monster. I have night terrors and can’t sleep without the trazodone the sisters give me.

The only fish I eat anymore is fish sticks, served every Friday at Lake Country Manor, where Mom had me committed.