I have never had good luck ice fishing. Well, let’s be honest, here. If you’ve listened to this show for any length of time, you know I don’t have much luck with fishing in general. I do love to fish, but I must not hold my mouth right, because I almost never catch anything.
And when I try to go ice fishing, my luck turns from bad to worse. I almost always have something go horribly wrong. The very first time I ever went ice fishing was in high school. I went with my girlfriend at the time, whose dad was a biologist for the Game and Fish. He took us out on the ice with his four-wheeler, and we got all the holes drilled and tip-ups set, and we sat there staring at the ice for an uneventful hour. Seeing our boredom, my girlfriend’s dad asked us if we wanted him to pull us on the sled with that four-wheeler for a bit.
We thought that sounded like a great idea. My girlfriend suggested I sit in the front of the sled, probably to block all the snow kicked up by the four-wheeler, and she sat on the back. Her dad took off around the ice, veering one way and then the other. Each time we swiched directions, I slid a little farther back on that sled, until one big turn, when I lost my grip for a moment, slid back into the girlfriend, and ejected her right out the back of the sled. She slid on her bum across the ice like she was on a luge track. It was funny – until it wasn’t. She shrieked, so we went running over to her. She had slid right down the length of a seam of ice that had pushed up, and it was razor sharp. It had sliced her all the way up her right leg, from her calf clear up to her belt.
That ice fishing trip yielded zero fish, but what I expect was a whopper of a hospital bill. I seem to recall she said they put more than 30 stitches in that leg.
And no, she never asked me to go ice fishing with her again.
