Outdoor Life, Sports Afield and Field and Stream magazines were staples of my reading while growing up. I could not wait for new issues every month and read each from cover to cover.

Every winter, articles and pictures about ice fishing fascinated me. I dreamed of drilling holes through the ice and sitting in a nice warm shanty while catching everything from perch to pike.

In middle Georgia, ice fishing does not happen. I knew there was little chance of me ever going up north to try it, but I wanted to. In the winter when Dearing Branch froze over, something that didn’t happen every year, I tried to ice fish, but the ice was never strong enough to hold me.

I did manage to stand on the bank over deeper holes and punch a hole in the ice with a stick, no drilling needed for the ice that was seldom an inch thick. And I never caught a fish, I guess most of our southern fish don’t eat much when it is that cold.

I have fished in Wisconsin ten times, but in the fall just after Labor Day. Although I experienced snow and sleet on those early September trips, there was no ice, I was a couple months too early.

Signs of the coming ice were everywhere. All docks there are removal, they can be rolled up onto the bank to keep the ice from crushing them. And I was amazed by trees and brush around the bank. There was a clear line about five feet above the water line where no leaves or needles grew.

I thought it might be a browse line where deer ate the foliage, but the local fisherman that hosted our group on those trips told me it was the snow line.
Snow around Rhinelander, Wisconsin covered the ground and lake ice about that deep for several months each winter, killing the tender parts of the plants.

A few years ago, I did catch a fish though the ice. My pond froze over about an inch thick, way too little to support me, but I took an idea from my past. Out on the end of my dock where I fed the fish all summer, I punched a hole in the ice with a pipe, baited up with a piece of floating fish food, and landed a two-inch bream.

That will probably be the only ice fish I ever catch.