For friends, family and the random search engine visitor. This blog started as an experiment in mobile blogging from my Palm TREO 600, 700, Prē, HTC Evo, Samsung 5, Pixel 3, Pixel 6 Pro. Now it serves as a simple repository of favorite activities. Expect bad golf, good fishing, great sailing, eating, drinking, adventure travel, occasional politics and anything else I find interesting along the way including, but not limited to, any of the labels listed here...
MW BLOG LABEL CLOUD (click label for posts on that topic)
Anticipating commentariat demand, I did venture back out on the ice and risked frostbite to take the tent down. Shortly after returning home I grabbed this screen capture off of Shag Cam. You can see the tent is down, but it looks like I got out just in time. The Imperial Walker seems to be eying the hole I made in the ice. I wonder - are they looking to do a little laser ice fishing for pike? Not very sporting, but - you know - It's the Empire.
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Do you think anyone would mind...
... if I just left the ice tent and fished it off the bottom in the spring?
Sent from my HTC smartphone on the Now Network from Sprint!
... so to speak. It took a pick axe, shovel, chain saw, power auger, axe and crowbar to carve a sufficient hole and most of the day before I got the tent up. Everything was hurting this morning.
Heading to the tent armed with my trident and a jury rigged (duck tape) pole mount for my (hopefully) waterproof camera
My great fear was that I would wake to find the tent blown to the other side of the lake, or the hole frozen solid again. No worries. Tent was still there, and just a thin crust of ice on the hole. One day left to actually try to do something with it.
Ice tent from the outside
Ice tent from the inside
Ice tent from underneath
So what happened? Net net - no fish. But everything functioned as intended. I was on top of 16-18 feet of water with a four foot iron spear. I had to work out a technique that involved more "dropping" than "throwing". The cool thing is that the decoy actually did draw pike. I could see them circling and one even hit the decoy. I got a few "drops", but no hits.My duck tape camera mount assembly worked pretty well. I got some good video clips including a couple of pike circling the decoy. I was going to post the video here, but it needs some editing, and the netbook I have with me can't handle it. This will have to serve as a placeholder until I get to a real computer with some time.
UPDATE - Finally got around to editing this video:
This turned out to be a lot more difficult than I expected. Having determined the proper location for assembling the tent... ...I dragged the collapsed tent out to a spot in the opening of the bay. First step was to clear the snow and cut a hole in the ice large enough to spear any pike passing by.
This turned out to be more difficult than expected. The ice was 18 - 20 inches thick at that location. It took a pickaxe, shovel, chain saw, a borrowed power auger from a neighboring fisherman on the ice, axe, and crowbar to get through sufficiently.
After numerous trips back to the cabin to warm up, changes into dry clothes and to get beer, in about six hours I had enough of a hole to assemble the tent.
By sunset it was done.
I just hope the tent is still here in the morning, and the hole has not refrozen to the point I cannot reopen it.
While I spent much of the day trying to cut a picture window out of too thick ice, a nice couple from Marquette showed with a power auger and started drilling holes a little further out on the lake.
That's them in the distance
Within an hour they had several holes drilled, lines baited and dropped, and were pulling pike out of the lake. Half a dozen at least with a couple of keepers.
It was good they showed up. I borrowed the power auger and without it I never would have finished cutting the hole.
I am having trouble explaining to people why I am up here now at Shag Lake trying to spear a Northern Pike through a hole in the ice. I think it all goes back to these picture. They were taken at least 50 years ago. My dad introduced me to ice fishing on Shag Lake. I distinctly recall staring through that hole in the ice and trying to explain to my Dad that there were no fish down there. I never went ice fishing again That is - until Harlan and I set up a dark tent and tried ice spearing three years ago. We set up the tent, but did not stay long enough to give it a proper go.
This is how it is supposed to work. You don't cut just a little hole in the ice - more like a picture window. Then you put this light proof tent on top of the hole. The only light inside the tent is coming up through the ice. Because of the ice and cold, the water is clear. The effect is like an aquarium. You can easily see 12 - 15 feet down to the bottom. Then you dangle a decoy to get the pike to swim under the hole and spear it with a trident. Easy. That's the theory.
For some reason, the notion of standing over an open hole and spearing a fish makes a lot more sense to me than standing out in the cold dropping a frozen worm through a hole in the ice. I hope this helps explain my rationale.
To be sure I remembered how to set up the tent, I assembled it in the comfort of the 72 degree cabin as a dry run. Tomorrow - on the frozen lake. Now all I need is a hole in the ice.
Lots and lots of pictures. A collage of a few of them (click to expand)
We were in Chicago to celebrate my dad's 90th birthday. My sisters planned a big bash for the extended family which they cleverly named "Papapalooza 2012".
It was a big success by any standard, everyone had a great time.
There is nothing that Wallachs enjoy more than getting together with more Wallachs. A close second is looking at pictures and videos of Wallachs getting together with more Wallachs. This weekend was pretty close to heaven for the family with a gathering of the patriarchs and the generations that followed.
There were a lot of great family photographers at the event. I looked at my few pics compared to others and decided - I got nothing. Instead I put other peoples pics into the collage at the top of the page, and I will use this post to consolidate links to pictures as they are posted on the 'tubes:
I'll add links here as I get them. In addition, Jeff focused on shooting video clips. Everyone's favorite has Dad dancing with his older sister Edith in video 1 of 3 (linked here), the singalong in video 2 of 3 is also fun (if you are a Wallach), but I'll embed here video 3 of 3 for the birthday cake and sampling of Hyman's 70 year old vishnik:
A great event enjoyed by all.
Work has begun planning for "Papapalooza 2022" to celebrate Dad's 100th birthday on 2-18-22.
President Barack Obama's big-money day in S.F. (02-17) 16:04 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- President Obama wrapped up a day of California fundraisers Thursday with a speech at the Nob Hill Masonic Center on elevating the middle class, as hundreds of demonstrators - from the Tea Party to Occupy - railed outside against his policies on the economy, the environment and contraception...
In the almost 30 years we have lived here, we've watched the parade once. It was rainy and cold and we couldn't get close enough to see much. That one time was enough for Sigrid.
Kearney and Columbus
This being the Year of the Dragon, and considering your loyal blogger was born under the sign of the Dragon* and this the first year we elected a Chinese-American mayor, I thought I should walk down the hill and try again. FWIW some shots and clips:
Hizzoner
The weather was better, but still found the crowds a bit much...
... so I finished the night watching the Chinese New Year parade on TV at a North Beach Italian eatery drinking an Irish beer. San Francisco Values at their best.
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* SPECIAL NOTE: While researching this post, I learned that I was born under the sign of the Water Dragon. This is what the Chinese Zodiac says about those born under the sign of the Water Dragon:
"Force and power are the symbols attributed to the Dragon... those born under the influence of the Dragon are considered the luckiest of all and good fortune simply follows them wherever they go... Indeed, whether male or female, Dragons are libidinous and score quite a hit with the opposite sex."
This note has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this post. I just thought it important to take note of these facts for the enlightenment and edification of The Reader.
Anticipating commentariat demand, I did venture back out on the ice and risked frostbite to take the tent down. Shortly after returning home I grabbed this screen capture off of Shag Cam. You can see the tent is down, but it looks like I got out just in time. The Imperial Walker seems to be eying the hole I made in the ice. I wonder - are they looking to do a little laser ice fishing for pike? Not very sporting, but - you know - It's the Empire.
