A Day on Lake Mine

Four inches of clear ice between us and four hundred feet of the clearest water

Go through on this ore pit you'd better kiss your butt goodbye

Glacial blue-green water glittering dangerously below our boots

We're ready above, holes drilled, ice house up, scoopers in hand

Scooping the ice out the holes peering down hoping to see an elusive trout

Watching as your radiant pink jig and fat dead shiner float past the thirty foot mark

Then you wait, seemingly forever to feel it hit bottom, hoping a rainbow will get it first

No such luck, pull up about five feet off bottom then the wait is on

The air is so cold plastic windows bust as if it were made of glass

Trying to evade the cold, slush threatening assault on our boots

Wet cold weather boots freeze quickly when it is twenty-below without the wind chill

Too cold for work, but not for fishing

Skunked today but we'll be back soon