PEOPLE WHO complain that baseball is a slow moving, boring sport have never been ice fishing. I’ve just returned from the 35th Annual Smalltown Boys Ice Fishing/Beer Drinking/Fish Tale Embellishing Extravaganza, and I’m suffering from severe sensory deprivation.

It’s the same every year. A dozen or more guys show up at various times on a Friday in February and are segregated into two sporting camps—the old guys’ camp and the young bucks’ camp. The location for the past 10 years, or so, has been the All Seasons Camps on Big Lake, up north.

I’ve been attending the annual ritual for 20 years, so I missed the early trips, though I feel as though I was there because I’ve heard the stories for two decades. According to legend, in the old days when my fellow old guys were the original young bucks, they roughed it. It was 60 degrees below zero and they took dog sleds onto Lambert Lake. They stayed in igloos with only the heat of the dogs to keep them warm, and they drank heavily from sun-up Friday to sun-down Sunday. They caught too many 10 lb. brook trout to keep. Anything under 5 lbs. was thrown back. I don’t doubt the integrity of my fellow geezers, but I’ve noticed that over the years, the temperature at Lambert Lake has dropped 30 degrees and the average fish taken has gained several pounds.

Friday night at the annual ice fishing/beer drinking/ fish tale embellishing extravaganzas is the social highlight of the weekend. Guys are happy to see each other again and celebrate by enjoying an abundance of “wobbly pops”. As my buddy Bernie likes to say, “If you weren’t supposed to drink 30 beers a day, they wouldn’t make 30-packs.”

The old guys spend the first evening telling stories and repeating old jokes, slurring punch lines, and laughing as if we hadn’t heard them all thirty (or more) times. Being serious fishermen, we’re typically in bed by one o’clock a.m., doors locked to prevent intrusions by our intoxicated off-spring.

The young bucks don’t know enough to give up the party before three a.m. They just haven’t suffered the ensuing headache and nausea often enough to know better. For the most part, their memory of the night’s events ends around midnight, but the beer drinking, food-fighting, table dancing, norules card playing party goes on. Invariably, someone loses consciousness and becomes the subject of a photo documented dress-up session. He ends up wearing an apron, a wig, lipstick, and fur hat, and often has a stuffed duck sitting on his head as he unwittingly poses on the sofa for a digital photo shoot—soon to be shared with millions, including his proud, young wife, on the World Wide Web.

Saturday is a different story. These avid, young ice fishermen are up at the crack of 10 a.m.; looking a bit green; feeling very tired; and wondering what happened. They are noticeably more quiet than on Friday night, obviously totally focused on the fishing.

Our resident guides, Bert and Dave, have spoken to our hosts, Rob and his teenage son, Robbie, and have us hooked up with the ideal fishing spot. Big Lake is six miles long so, needless to say, our “hot spot” is five miles from our camps. But, our guides are confident in the insider information they’ve received from our hosts. These guys live on Big Lake and obviously know where the good fishing is, (and keep it to themselves), because their walls and website are covered with trophy pike, bass, trout, and salmon. By the end of the weekend, however, it’s becoming obvious they make their living by reeling in 200 lb. suckers.

This year, the annual ice fishing trip fell during the Vancouver Winter Olympics, so we decided to award medals for the three longest fish. The sorry truth is that I caught the smallest fish of the day, a 12 inch white perch, and won the silver medal. Dave’s son, Todd, was the champion, with a whopper 13? inch smallmouth bass, and was so proud of his gold medal, he took it home and had it bronzed. You don’t have to be the head stock boy at the Smalltown Supa Dolla to go ice fishing.

So, to summarize, on a cold weekend in February, thirteen men converged on Big Lake; ate too much; drank far too many brewskis; woke Saturday morning with big heads; drove five miles on ATVs to get to the “sweet spot”; fished 65 tip-ups for seven hours while standing in 25 mile per hour winds; and caught two fish, barely bigger than our bait.

I was ready to say, “NEVER AGAIN!”, until I got home on Sunday, and spent six hours watching man-bashing movies on the Lifetime Network with the little woman after which I promptly emailed Bert and Dave to make my reservations for next year’s ice fishing extravaganza.

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