A Cold One (Pt. II)

Stick it out a little while longer. Something will turn up.

Turn off the car and hear the soft tink-tink-tink of cold air striking the warm engine. Lock the car and hear it beep twice, just to make sure. Then there is stillness–save for the scrape of the sleds being dragged across the ridges of frozen gravel. Leave your coat open as you pull your sled so you don’t overheat. Up over the bank now, careful not to let your entire contents spill out the backside as you haul over the pushed lip.

On the downslope now, you make the gradual descent towards the lake’s edge. Step out of the loop of pull rope situated about your waist and walk alongside the sled to avoid it plowing into your ankles. A childhood pang tells you to take a running start and hop in the sled, take it for a quick slalom down the hill, but there is no room for you. A fleeting thought but a pleasant one.

The sun has yet to crest the horizon. You are immersed in a sulking winter grey, the half light before morning reveals itself. The wind is not up yet and all about is still, broken only by the shushing of two sleds parting the granular snow. The headlamp affixed to your forehead illuminates the sled and boot tracks of S just ahead. S has been here before and knows the waypoint. You seek large game today. Larger than the northern pike that flit through your imagination while you spool tip-ups and tie leaders. Much larger still than the ones you actually hoist out of the frozen lakes with your own hands.

You are nearing the spot, somewhere near the middle of the lake, though the precise location is an inexact science. This is close enough. The surface is unremarkable, another patch of windblown ice scraped bare like sandblasted glass. Below is another story. Underneath are untold depths of crystal water, so cold it is a wonder that it too is not locked into slabs of solid ice.

S begins to drill the holes, working outward from a central nexus into a widening field of scatter plot conjectures. You follow behind and slosh out the slush and shavings with a slotted metal scoop, an action that always reminds you of a martini being strained in a shaker. S troops on ahead, puncturing more portals into the unknown, checking depth and relative location. Once the hole is cleared you ready a tip-up. This is a set-line contraption, able to be left unattended and poised to beguile unwitting predators cruising for an easy meal. But there’s no such thing as free lunch.

You dip your hand into the frigid bait bucket and scoop out a monstrous sucker minnow. Big bait for big fish is how you justify sticker shock at the bait shop. You hook it behind the dorsal with the outsized treble hook and lower it into the hole. You watch as the lead takes hold, pulling it down, down further into the abyss until the flash on the fish finder tells you that it is set just right.

You hook the spring-loaded metal arm underneath the spool arm groove. Your trap is set. The slightest turn of the spool will unseat the lever, bringing the flag to full attention–alerting you to a potential catch. A successive chain of events that hopefully results in a hand-to-hand struggle with the unseen.

Your tip-ups are set now, scattered across the ice field in a random assortment of postulation. Your best guesses. Each one is a question plumbed into a depth of answers and non-answers. You return to the central point and set up the shanty. Work together because the wind is up now, scraping across the raw surface, dislodging any loose accumulation into curls of crystalline particles. Set the anchors in the ice, fastening all four corners, and set your sled on the leeward side and then tuck in through the corner door. The sides rattle from the mild fury outside and it is a nice reprieve to be out of the wind. It takes its toll to sit hunchbacked against its relentless lashings. Inside and sheltered from the high glare of the sun, you can gaze into the porthole tapped into the ice.

Rig up your heavy jigging rod, the one your dad made for you, salvaged from the end of a broken steelhead rod. Watch as the jig winds its way ever downward making lackadaisical circles like a wounded bird. The water is clear as gin (martinis again), and you can see well down to forty-feet before the lack of light engulfs your submersible. Good luck down there, you think.

What follows next is repetition, the very definition of insanity. Sharp snap up with the rod tip, soft flutter down. Repeat ad nauseam. You can see the movement on the graph, a single horizontal line leaping and slowly settling back down, the reading like a barometer gone haywire. Your mind inevitably wanders - to places far and perhaps a bit warmer, to tasks awaiting at home, any old thing. You watch the oscillation on the graph, up and down, up and down, up and—There!

Rising off the bottom, an angry mass of yellow, a large sonar disturbance. It noses up to your jig which you twitch lightly to keep it interested. Your heart starts to palpitate, this is it, this is it! You raise your rod ever so cautiously, pull the jig up through the water column to simulate a tasty morsel making its hasty exit. The amorphous threat follows in close pursuit. It will happen any second. Your line will go tight, the rod will double over, the drag will peel out in agonized whines. And then—it doesn’t.

You watch as the large yellow mark drifts back toward the bottom, disinterested, unfooled. You entice him to chase once more, following the flutters and desperate twitches of your jig, but it will only commit so far—it refuses to close the final, fatal distance. A repetitious game of cat-and-mouse playing out beneath your feet. And then, just as soon as it had appeared, the electric apparition vanished, blending into the bottom once more. Gone.

But you were close. Close enough to keep you hooked. Close enough to keep at it without measurable reward. After some time you decide a switch is in order. You snip off the jig and tie on a heavy gold spoon. It plummets to the lake bottom. You resume your Sisyphean task - jigging, settling, jigging, settling. You are alone in the shanty now. S has long since abandoned the monotony and has ventured outside to prospect across the lunarscape, testing the wide margins of the submerged valley. Perhaps the next spot, and the next.

Your efforts draw in another heavy mark, intrigued by your machinations, but also unconvinced. Your expectations are tempered this time, your heart rate remains unaltered. A short game of chase ensues and then ends similarly. The sonar mark dissipates into the same deep as the first. Time for a break.

You step outside and shield your eyes. The sun is obscured by a bank of clouds, an endless sheet of winter gray like hammered metal. Behind it exudes a brilliant corona, a halo of warmth held fast in a frozen sky. S is off in the distance, you can make his form hunched over, peering into the depths himself.

The wind is constant now, battering against the outside of the shanty. Farther off, beyond S, you can see the half moon shape of massive kites. The silhouettes are brilliant splashes of color like orange rinds suspended in barren air. Riders with skis or snowboards are tethered to them, gliding across the thin skein of snow distributed across the frozen lake. You listen closely and can hear the scrap of the metal edges scarring the hard ice beneath.

One of them coasts over, effortlessly plying the stiff gale. He asks how the day has been, how was the fishing? Slow, you tell him truthfully. He nods, angles his sail to the wind and is whisked off, covering distance at an impossible rate. He is nearly across the open expanse already, headed for the north edge and fast disappearing.

You check your watch. It is well into the afternoon. You have been here for some time. S calls it the Lotus Room. Time is relative here, slipping past you like a kite caught in the wind, going, going. It is hours occupied by rote repetition, the quiet ritual of setting lines, plumbing depths, waiting for answers that may never arrive. Each instance, each repetition forgettable as an individual moment, but memorable as a whole. An outing marked only by effort and left unrewarded by a sizeable catch is still a worthy endeavor.

It is time to go. You collapse the shanty, pack up your items and laden your sled once more with 5-gallon buckets, augers and fish finders. You collect your tip-ups in reverse order, spooling up the line and tossing the now dead minnow on the ice. The seagulls and crows will benefit from your slow fortune.

You tug the sled behind you, following single-file like your initial departure. You pass another shanty, this one closer to shore, and from its side window peeks the nose of a small girl. She emerges from the shanty in a bright snowsuit and says hello! Hello, you say. She jitters about, shifting from foot to foot, happy to be free from the shanty and the tedium of fishing. Her dad follows close behind and you pause to talk shop, to talk about conditions and weather, and who heard what on which lake and when. Daaaad! she says, now bored of this interaction too. You take the hint and wave goodbye. Good luck, you say to them both.

You return to the vehicles and turn them on, letting the ice defrost from the windshield. You help S load his sled into the truck and he returns the favor. Your mind has once again begun to wander away from here, has already started to trace the roads leading home. You think of lunch and shirking off your bibs and heavy boots. You fixate on another cup of coffee and a hot shower to purge the cold from your muscles and wind-cracked hands. You wave goodbye to S, shout out the trusty refrain that you’ll do this again sometime soon (probably next weekend). You reverse out of the lot and motor up the hill, the frozen lake now slipping away in the rearview. You hold your hands over the vent, allowing the heat to restore feeling to the ends of numb fingers. The sensation spreads from your palms outward, like sunlight across an empty lake and you realize that even on a cold day, a long day with no catch, a cold one in all sense of the word, there is always warmth about you.