Today was another learning experience for us all.
Our day started after sleeping in and slowly moving around the house while we looked outside at the fresh dump of snow and pondered staying home.
We always eat breakfast at home and pack our snacks and hot chocolate for a days fishing. Today, I decided to treat the boys to breakfast at McDonald’s and a hot chocolate for the road. We even convinced Austin to try a bacon and egg McMuffin and his thoughts were, “eh, it’s not bad.”
After eating breakfast, we started driving to the lake and I remembered quickly why I do not eat at McDonald’s often. Personally, I feel slightly sick afterwards and would have been better off with a bacon bagel belt from Tim Hortons.
When we turned off the highway, a truck followed suit. I took my time on the snow covered roads as safety is always my number one priority. I stayed ahead of the yellow truck until it was time to turn into the unplowed parking area where we almost got stuck yesterday. Instead of turning into the parking lot, I decided to signal to the side and I pulled over so the truck could pass. It turned out, the guys in the truck were also going fishing and they too were contemplating their approach into the parking lot.
As I started to pull forward towards the parking lot, the ice under the snow denied traction forward and we started to slide towards the bank. A few attempts to free ourselves from the welcoming snow banks remained futile. Thankfully, we had a tow strap and the guys in the truck helped pull us out. A big thank you to those guys and I hope you got your machine fixed.
Our walk to “the spot” followed that of a meandering river through uncharted territory. We tried to stay on the existing trail below the fresh snow, but found ourselves sinking up to one foot in spots as we made our trek forward into the fresh snow.
The log stump that we fished yesterday was showing itself under the snow, so we set our bearing and slowly covered ground until we arrived.
I was surprised at how few people were out fishing this weekend. Maybe most people were thinking the warmer weather and rain we have been having were the recipe for wet conditions? One thing to consider, especially when living close to town is the temperature differences and elevation changes based on the city of Quesnel. The conditions were perfect. We had no slush in our tent and the surrounding area around it.
Setting up our tent was a learning experience for the boys as we do not normally fish in the wind. A strategic approach was necessary to help prevent our ice tent from tumbling down the lake. We secured two anchors on the skirting before opening the hubs. This has always helped me in the wind keep my tent in check. Then, we secured the hub strap facing the direction the wind was coming from. This helped (for most of the day) our hub from being pushed in on us.
Set up was quick, easy and something I’m looking forward to in the future. My 8 inch Striker Master auger made quick work of our 3 fishing holes. Normally, with my hand crank auger it would take me a good 20 minutes to drill our holes, both because I’m out of shape and breath when I do it.
We were fishing by 9:45am and I was sure we had missed the morning bite. We were marking fish but they were not biting well. Then, the bite picked up before our eyes and fish were getting put on the ice from 10:00am to 11:30am. After that, we would grind it out and watch as multiple kokanee swiped at our gear at the 10-12ft mark. Thankfully the fish stayed, because this kept us interested long enough for Austin to catch the biggest kokanee of the day.
Frosty the snowman was also brought back to life today when the bite slowed down. Unfortunately, we did not have any branches for his arms or rocks or sticks for his nose. If you are heading out to hang out with Frosty, I’m sure he would welcome you bringing him his arms back.
After grinding out the last couple hours on the ice, we were considering heading home. I had to re-secure the tent anchors as the wind had been pushing hard on our tent and the snow on top of the ice was softening up. Thankfully, my ice scoop served as a chisel and I was able to get down to hard ice. We continued to fight the wind and in hindsight I should have secured all four corners of the tent. It’s not often that I’ve been fishing and the wind changes direction as quickly as it did today.
It was like a tornado had swirled around and was trying to grab our tent. We held it down a few times, but thought since we were leaving that we did not have to secure it anymore than it already was. Then, as Ethan and I were outside of the tent Austin yelled at us to come back inside. The wind had threw the tent to the side and knocked over our propane bottle with the Buddy heater still running inside. I quickly shut the buddy heater off, grabbed the bottle and shut it off as well. No one was hurt and nothing got melted from the buddy heater as it remained in place.
As we packed up, we collapsed the tent in reverse which works great in the wind. With the tent rolled up, we unscrewed the last anchor and placed our tent in its bag.
Another day on the ice was exactly what I needed. Sometimes, it’s the simple things in life that keep us learning about the simplicity and complexity of the world around us.