Winter snow and ice…and all things nice.  Not many folks look out to the white snow dunes of a Western New York winter and feel that way.  Ice fishermen are exceptional winter sportsmen that think that way every day, so count me in! 

The clear blue sky after sunrise made for a bright and sunny morning.  The temperature was a bitter 4 degrees, there was a stiff wind blowing from the southwest at 10 mph, making the chill factor about –10F.  In North Dakota, they call this kind of arctic chill a “burzee” cold for this mid-February day, but in Western New York they just called it….”darn cold”. 

I had promised Collin, my 5-year old grandson and fishing partner for the day – aka “hillion man” - that we were going to try some ice fishing from our brand new fish hut, a surprisingly lightweight CLAM 5600.  It had arrived by freight delivery the day before.

The two of us had great fun as we unpackaged the shipping container and then completed the pre-assembly.  We rigged the one time lanyard attachment of the tent walls to the fold-up base, then checked the extending tent support poles for proper fit, they were perfect and above that, were so easy to use – a 5-year old could handle it! 

Then we hopped inside the opened-up base section and together we pushed the support poles upward and popped the CLAM open.  All at once, the poles snapped into position and there we were with 6 feet - 6 inches of head room.  This is a real advantage for my 6-2” frame.  We zipped the doors closed, then test-opened each of the vents and the Velcro windows - one at a time.  Check, check and check!!  Collin was eager to get the hut out to do some real hardwater fishing.

A few seconds later, we turned the living room lights off and fired up the Coleman electric lantern.  Night fishing..?!  Yes, this was a real option now.  One moment later, there she was peeking in – good ‘ol grammy – with a kind smile and a gentle voice to ask young Collin if we needed a hole in the floor and some ice rods during this living room dry run. 

“Hi grammy! Nope,” said Collin with a wide-eyed smile, “we’re just practicing for tomorrow when we are REALLY going fishing on REAL ICE.”  Collin was a complete planner for his modest 5 years of age, soon to be six.  It appears his grandpa is the lucky one, as Collin was born gifted to enjoy the adventure of the wild winter outdoors.  It often seems he cannot wait until tomorrow for the next trip and the next, to try his luck at catching the finny fortune from the depths below. 

Young Collin, never at a loss for words on some form of fishing question, a blessing, turns to grammy and asks, “have you ever gone ice fishing grammy?”  Without stopping for an answer, he continues, “if you did, how did you know the ice was “OK” before you walked out on it?  I was just wondering.”  He trusted his grammy to reply with an honest answer that would silence his concern….he was looking for some additional reassurance for this first hardwater fishing experience from an ice hut.  She said, “you’ll have to ask your Dziadzia (Polish expression for grandpa) about that.  Of course, he didn’t want me to know that there was any fear at all.  So when he came over and stopped to think of how to ask this question, I quickly asked if he knew that we use an ice spud pole to find out if the ice is thick enough to walk on.  Then I showed Collin the “pole”.  He understood.  “Oh”, he added, “this is cool, can I do it tomorrow too?  What if the ice was a hillion inches thick?”  Now you know why we call him the hillion man! 

We were both pretty excited to try out the new hut on ice and Collin was sleeping over.  Finished with waxing the exterior of the new 78 pound CLAM 5600, I figured this would ease the pull out to our icetop destination.  We got busy checking our 2 pound test fishing lines on each of our ice rods. 

Then we sorted out the ice jigs and made the little oversized pocket tackle box much more manageable.  The 1/80 ounce jigs had their own plastic mini-tube, the 1/64 ounce jigs, etc.  The swimming jigs were divided into a separate compartment all their own.  This may have been the first time that good choices could be made prior to untangling hooks and jigs since my ice fishing box came into being some 50 years ago.  Collin, said, “Dziadz, we must have a hillion lures for ice fishing inn this box!!  Can I carry the tackle box tomorrow?”  “Sure,” I said.  We were organized!! 

We arrived at a small inland lake by 9:00 a.m. and not only was it cold, the snow was deep at about 20 inches.  I thought the CLAM might pull heavy and deep, but even without skis the pull was not difficult at all.

In a local small lake, we located an area we knew to be a summer weed bed with nearby adjacent deep water.  We first drilled a 6 inch hole in the deep water flat (about 15 feet), then another in the shallow flat above the drop off (about 6 feet).  With two holes on 12 inch ice, we set up Collin’s rig using a heavy sinker to set a bobber stop as a bottom indicator.  I removed the heavy sinker and attached his favorite lightweight ice-fly, added a live spike grub and helped him drop that first line in. 

It reached bottom in about 10 seconds.  I showed him that to jig for winter fish, we needed to fish slow to start with, dropping the fly to bottom and then jiggling the tip to lift the attraction from bottom by about 2 to 6 inches.  He was holding the rod when the tip slowly bent downward.  “FISH ON!”  I yelped.  Collin quickly started reeling the tiny rod and the tip bent straight down toward the water.  This looked like a very nice first fish of the day.  Drag was peeling out.  About 10 seconds later, there it was, a beautiful 12 inch yellow perch. 

“Wow”, Collin said.  “Look at this fish Dziadz, this is monster.  How big is it?”  I said, “about big enough to make a nice fish sandwich.”  He answered immediately, “can grammy cook this one up for us?  Can we make fish sandwiches again?  I love ice fishing,” he added.  He was pretty pumped. 

Suddenly he looked over to me and asked, “aren’t you going to fish too Dziadz?”  Suddenly he was concerned that I hadn’t dropped a line in yet.  You gotta love humble kids, especially when they are your grandchildren.  Remind me to thank my daughter and her husband for doing such a good job. 

I answered, “I’m rigging up my line now, why don’t you drop your line down again anyway, you might find another fish down there…...“  Collin said, “OK, that’s a good idea Dziadz, but can we bring the ice hut over to here, I’m getting cold.”

Of course, that was the whole idea of digging these first holes, to find a location to set the hut up where there was fish.  Having said that, we moved the CLAM 5600 so that one of the corners was right over Collin’s hotspot, then I marked the other corners and we dug three more holes.  Two minutes later, the hut was up and secured with ice anchors. 

We went inside.  “Wow, this is really cool Dziadz!” We moved our tackle boxes and buckets around for about 5 minutes getting things where we wanted them.  Collin said, “Dziadz, it’s getting really warm in here, can I take my coat off?”  “Sure you can buddy, we have hangers for that over here,” I answered.  

Collin started to drop his line from inside the hut for the first time.  It reached bottom and he started to jiggle just like before….only at his rate of rhythm.  It didn’t matter.  The tip started for the bottom as soon as he started to lift it.  The drag started to squeal and we were into another nice fish.

“Dziadz!!!” He yelled to me with a wide grin that stretched from ear to ear.  “Really big fish this time….he is really pulling Dziadz!  Can you help me with this one?”  I started to slide across the hut to where he was and just then, there it was, a black bass, about 15 inches long, wriggling, rolling inside the hut, doing his out-of-water hello.

“WOW Dziadz, look at this!!  A monster!! Can we keep it?”  I had to explain that this fish was out of season in New York for this time of year, so we were going to have to let it go.  Collin was OK with that story.  He simply said, “OK, but why is there a season?”  That started another story for him to learn a bit more about the outdoors. 

Was this fun?  Are you kidding?!!  Life is about these very moments.  We stayed another hour or so, caught a total of six fish, including some bluegills.   The next trip was not just the two of us.  My six-year old granddaughter insisted on coming with us too.  We enjoyed about the same good action too.  The trip after that, the older sister, nine-years old didn’t want to be left out of the action….now it was a family affair!  I should have bought the large CLAM!! 

It wasn’t long before the friends of the kids wanted to also join us.  It didn’t take much to start the spark of winter fishing in the neighborhood.  Anybody can do it, especially when you take the kids out with a CLAM ice hut.  It made the winter adventure so very comfortable.  On other trips, we fished outside the hut many times, but went in to eat a sandwich, enjoy some hot chocolate, and warm up. ….And discuss our next jig color, new hole location and all the rest.  After the day on the ice was done, the kids wanted to go skiing with their mom and dad.  There is time for many winter adventures if you love to be out there, but someone has to show you the ropes.  After that, it seems getting older by age is not preventable, but staying young-at-heart is easier. 

Next year when ice is ready, don’t clam up inside your house in front of the TV.  Clam up outside with a real CLAM and get with it.  Introduce a young friend to the winter outdoors.  You’ll be glad you did, a hillion times over!