Ice Fishing Weekend, February 2nd - 4th, 2007

Kimble Fishing Club Cabin - Lake Teedyuskung

I have to admit this weekend didn't start out looking like it was going to be memorable.  When I arrived mid afternoon on Friday the weather was cold, getting colder, and couple inches of snow had been forecast for late afternoon. 

Jason arrived soon after I did.  He said three of the crew were already out fishing in front of our other cabin near the north end of the lake.  I'd been out to the KFC cabin earlier in the day to start the wood stove, so by this time it was cool in there, but not freezing. So after making sure the stove was putting out all she had, J & I packed up some beers and walked the 1/4 mile down lake to see how they were doing.  Hey, what else was there to do?

On the walk down lake I thought about how as usual we had nothing specific planned to do here this weekend.   It was possible that the whole time might be spent standing around drinking beer and watching those ambitious enough to have brought fishing gear pull perch and bluegill out of the lake.  It is "Ice Fishing Weekend" and some people actually do fish.  I always have that same anxiety at the start of an IFW.  Is this one going to be a dud? What in hell is there to do in a one room cabin on a frozen lake in mid winter?  Whose idea is it to come back here every year?  It seems we just show up hope something interesting just manages to happen. 

Yet the fact is something fun and interesting always does happen.  It's just a matter of having the right people and the toys they bring.  Add whatever the weather happens to be, liberal amounts of alcohol, stir thoroughly, and stand back. We've made half a dozen trips to the emergency room in Honesdale from IFW's.  If I were a decent writer I could fill a book with stories of inane games we've dreamed up.  People reading them who haven't actually been here would suspect I made most of them up.  Actually they'd be right in the sense that I have been the one who dreamed up most of the stunts, but they'd be wrong in thinking we didn't actually do them. But I'm not much of a writer and I don't have a lot of time to waste trying to become one, so I'll give you a quick recap.

This year we started Saturday by cutting down a dead tree alongside the cabin.  It was large enough to do real damage if it wasn't dropped precisely between the cabin and the shed.  I was willing to take the risk and just drop it with my saw, but Paul lacked confidence in my ability and had a different plan. He rigged the tree with a cable and wanted to pull it down slowly while I ran the chainsaw against the back of the tree just enough to allow it to keep moving with his come-along.  He had the cable anchored into a fishing hole augured into the 7 inches of ice.  Being the engineer that I am I figured that if he got enough tension on the cable the piece of iron he had in the hole might produce enough of a stress concentration to fracture the ice and make Paul a member of the Polar Bear Club.  I had pre-notched the front of the tree carefully and was 99% sure that if I just cut it normally from the back it would fall where it had to.  As Paul jacked away on the come-along the tree began to lean.  The tension rose, and so did my apprehension.  We had had a bad experience using this method once before.  I decided at that point the polar Bear Club could get by without Paul as a member, so I revved up and ran the saw in quickly into the back of the tree and brought it down.  Not as good a story as it would have been had the ice given way, but some time you have to make the sensible choice.

While some of us were cutting up the tree to get it out of the yard, the others were shoveling the three inches of snow off the lake looking for an ice hockey rink.  It's not often the lake is smooth enough for skating, but this was one of those times.  Unfortunately the three inch snowfall Friday evening had hidden the rink.  I don't know for sure how they knew where it was, but by God after three hours of digging they found it.

Six guys had skates and sticks so they played three on three.  After a little juggling of the teams to get them evenly matched skill wise they had a pretty good series of games.  The last hockey game at IFW had resulted in one of those aforementioned trips to the hospital, but this time no one was injured. 

I can't play hockey any more due to the nerve damage that I have in my ankle. I wasn't that down about missing the game though since I'd been the winner of the hospital trip that game years ago.  So while the others  were finishing the rink and beginning their game, I was thinking about what other kind of activity might be possible given the resources at hand.

What caught my eye was a 200 cc Honda four wheeler belonging to Bill Hitchcock;  it was just sitting there doing nothing.  Bill was fishing down at the other end of the lake.  Jonathan had ridden the wheeler up but he was involved with the hockey group.  The Honda was two wheel drive. I took it for a ride and started doing donuts on the ice.  Then I got an idea.  I drove over to the shore and loaded several 4 inch diameter by 18" long pieces of firewood on the rack and drove out into the virgin snow just beyond the hockey rink.  I got off and set up pieces of firewood standing on end, in pairs about 10 feet apart.  I was making gates for a slalom course.  I laid out a course of a little under 1/4 mile consisting of chicanes, sweepers and two hairpins.  Then I started racing the four wheeler around it.  The object was to go fast without knocking over any of the firewood "pylons".  With two wheel rear drive and the smooth ice driving sideways most of the time it was a ball.  Despite the 19 degree temperature I rode it pretty much solid for an hour.  I had designed the course tight so you couldn't get up much speed. The ice was glass smooth and the there was nothing anywhere to run into so safety wasn't an issue, but on the tight course meant the engine didn't have to turn a lot of revs so riding it was real easy on the machine.. 

When the hockey game broke up the guys all wanted to try their hand at my slalom course.  They were taking turns running against the clock, but I had another idea.  I went down and got another 4 wheeler, George's big four wheel drive Kawasaki. George wasn't around, but I knew he wouldn't mind since what we were doing couldn't hurt the machine.  I found right away that the bigger machine with the FWD was considerably quicker and easier to drive than the little two wheel drive.  I didn't want to get us into racing the two machines side by side anyway because eventually that would lead to contact, so I invented the game "Cat and Mouse".  One person would ride the little machine; he was the mouse.  The other would ride the big Kawasaki, the Cat.  The mouse got a 1/2 lap spot on the start.  The game was to see how many laps it took the cat to catch and pass the mouse.  Everyone took turns driving the cat and the mouse.  We played for hours, going a full hour passed dark by using the headlights.  It was 10 degrees, but no one wanted to quit.  Finally I called the game and we went in to scrounge for dinner.

Dinner was Surf & Turf ala Jug, deer meat and shrimp, along with all kinds of junk food snacks, candy, chips and dip.  Then it was a few hours of Ping Pong (doubles and triples on an oval table in a crowded room).  Before you knew it midnight had passed and I drifted off.  I'd spent all day outside in the sub 20 weather and had lightened my case of Schlitz by over a dozen cans, so I didn't feel wimpy about calling it a day early.

A few things will stand out about this IFW.  For one, it was the lowest turnout we've had that I can remember.  Some of our core group, the people who always show up, were not heard from.  Not one person of the female gender showed up.  Only two dogs were there.  We didn't have a bonfire.   On the plus side, no one was injured,   no one got too drunk, and with the small group you got to drive the cat or mouse as much as you wanted to.  I wonder what we'll do next year.  Maybe we'll just drink beer and watch people fish.  Wanna bet!