Ice fishing goes mainstream

Growing up, or, as my wife says, “growing older” in northern Minnesota, I experienced ice fishing two ways. One was to wait for the ice to be thick enough to use a truck to pull a heavy, wooden shelter out on the ice and place it in a spot where we hoped a fish would find us. Those of you who have seen the movie “Grumpy Old Men” know what I’m talking about.

While these shelters were comfortable with lots of amenities, by the time you got them on the ice, much of the best fishing was over and most of the fish in the lake seemed unaware of where we had set up. In other words, they weren’t cooperating.

To increase our odds of success, we would dress in what, by today’s standards, was poor winter clothing, carry a bucket with our gear, and move around the lake drilling holes and fishing until we got a bite. We would then sit on the bucket and freeze while we hoped there were more willing fish in the area. We tolerated this approach because it was all we knew and we were “outdoorsmen.”

Nowadays, ice fishing is becoming more and more mainstream. Colorado now boasts of more than 250,000 licensed anglers who ice fish every year. In fact, the catch rate through the ice in Colorado is much higher than in open water thanks to many innovations over the past few decades.

About four decades ago, my lifelong fishing partner and best friend, Greg Clusiau, introduced me to Dave Genz, who had invented a portable flip-over shelter that we could easily pull around the lake by hand. It stored our gear and let us move around the lake, locate more fish and do it in comfort.