Ice Tent IV - The Fish Awakens

It's been over seven years since I gifted an Ice Tent to my nephews and nieces in December 2008. I even providing an instructional video on how to assemble and use the tent. The idea is to place the blackout tent over a window sized hole in the ice, drop a decoy, then spear wandering Northern Pike. It didn't work that year (meaning we did not spear fish). Nor when we returned a few weeks later. Nor when I tried again in February 2012 solo expedition.  Brian and Stefanie's January Chicago wedding was an opportunity to try again. We had a weekend free until I was scheduled to fly back to EssEff.

Weather was perfect:

 Harlan picked me up after work on Friday and we drove to the Lake House.

Arrived in the dark, but cousin Mike warmed the camp and left provisions for a hearty breakfast.

DAY 1

In the morning it was time to set up the tent.

That was enough for one day. We head into Negaunee where Olive and her entourage had prepared a gourmet birthday dinner for me.

It was a warm and welcomed meal.

DAY 2

We attempt to spear and catch pike from our Ice Tent...

We want shoot underwater video, so worked up a Yooper Camera Mount

Ultimately we had some success, in a manner of speaking. 

As per usual, video will have to wait until I get around to editing it, but will be posted here in the fullness of time.

The big question, is whether we have finally determined whether the work is worth the reward. 

TBD.

Do you think anyone would mind....

BELATED UPDATE:

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Anticipating commentariat demand, I did venture back out on the ice and risked frostbite to take the tent down. Shortly after returning home I grabbed this screen capture off of Shag Cam. You can see the tent is down, but it looks like I got out just in time. The Imperial Walker seems to be eying the hole I made in the ice. I wonder - are they looking to do a little laser ice fishing for pike? Not very sporting, but - you know - It's the Empire.

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Do you think anyone would mind...

... if I just left the ice tent and fished it off the bottom in the spring?


Sent from my HTC smartphone on the Now Network from Sprint!

Ice Tent III - Finally in action...

... so to speak. It took a pick axe, shovel, chain saw, power auger, axe and crowbar to carve a sufficient hole and most of the day before I got the tent up. Everything was hurting this morning.

Heading to the tent armed with my trident and a
jury rigged (duck tape) pole mount for my (hopefully) waterproof camera

My great fear was that I would wake to find the tent blown to the other side of the lake, or the hole frozen solid again.
No worries. Tent was still there, and just a thin crust of ice on the hole. One day left to actually try to do something with it.

Ice tent from the outside

Ice tent from the inside

Ice tent from underneath

So what happened? Net net - no fish. But everything functioned as intended. I was on top of 16-18 feet of water with a four foot iron spear. I had to work out a technique that involved more "dropping" than "throwing". The cool thing is that the decoy actually did draw pike. I could see them circling and one even hit the decoy. I got a few "drops", but no hits.My duck tape camera mount assembly worked pretty well. I got some good video clips including a couple of pike circling the decoy. I was going to post the video here, but it needs some editing, and the netbook I have with me can't handle it. This will have to serve as a placeholder until I get to a real computer with some time.

UPDATE - Finally got around to editing this video [EDIT - The YouTube title was incorrect. This was actually "Ice Tent III"]:

The Ice Tent - Assembly

This turned out to be a lot more difficult than I expected. Having determined the proper location for assembling the tent... ...I dragged the collapsed tent out to a spot in the opening of the bay. First step was to clear the snow and cut a hole in the ice large enough to spear any pike passing by.


This turned out to be more difficult than expected. The ice was 18 - 20 inches thick at that location.



It took a pickaxe, shovel, chain saw, a borrowed power auger from a neighboring fisherman on the ice, axe, and crowbar to get through sufficiently.


After numerous trips back to the cabin to warm up, changes into dry clothes and to get beer, in about six hours I had enough of a hole to assemble the tent.


By sunset it was done.

I just hope the tent is still here in the morning, and the hole has not refrozen to the point I cannot reopen it.

I'll add video at some future date.

This is not my fish.

While I spent much of the day trying to cut a picture window out of too thick ice, a nice couple from Marquette showed with a power auger and started drilling holes a little further out on the lake.

That's them in the distance

Within an hour they had several holes drilled, lines baited and dropped, and were pulling pike out of the lake. Half a dozen at least with a couple of keepers.


It was good they showed up. I borrowed the power auger and without it I never would have finished cutting the hole.

Note to self: Next time - Power Auger