Fishing The “Northern Hole”

As I mentioned in my last post, fishing has been a big part of my life. This means I never slowed down when the winter months came and froze the lake. Fishing on the hardwater is just as good as casting on an open-water sunny day. My buddies and I began ice fishing with a pop-up shanty to shelter us from the coldest days, but eventually we built our own atop a trailer so we could leave it out on the lake permanently (while the ice is good). People might think it is miserable out there in the cold, but when you have a nice shanty, plus a heater, you can sit out there all day at a very warm and comfortable temperature.

This brings me to ‘northern hole’, as we liked to call it. Not 2 minutes from my house was located a natural spring where all sorts of fish like to hang out. However, when we fish there, we’re only looking for the Northern Pike. These are carnivorous fish that dominate northern hole. We’d get out on the lake early around 6 o’clock, set our tip-up rigs, and then sit and wait for a flag telling us ‘fish on!’ Pike are good eating, so we would keep the legal ones and release the young back into the lake. This is what keepers look like.