GREAT OUTDOORS: Mishaps mark end of ice fishing season

Even as the fishing remained slow last week, I am still thankful to have been able to get onto the ice again this winter, considering the number of recent "open winters" with no ice formation at all. I have spent many hours fishing from my original ice shanty that I built in 1988 and also used for customers while running ice charters from 1997 to 2011. Needless to say, this old hut carries a lot of joyful memories within its four walls, so it is hard to be in a bad mood while enjoying the use of it. Nonetheless, in a five-day stretch last week, I had a streak of careless mishaps that threatened to turn me into a grumpy old ice fisherman. Wednesday, I was using a "dead stick" rod baited with a perch rig. Naturally, when I caught a walleye while jigging my lure around 5:15 pm, it caught the extra line and it proved to be too much of a challenge to untangle them in the fading light. Conceding defeat, I tossed everything into my bucket and quit, as fish continued to show on the fish finder. On my way back to the rental cottage, my ATV inexplicably stalled a quarter mile from "home." About five minutes later, I was able to get it restarted and speculated that I must have bumped the kill switch. However, the same thing happened the following day, but this time within sight of the cottage. It would not restart and I had to rely on a short tow from a good Samaritan. Last Thursday, I made a rookie fisherman mistake. I usually just reach into the bait bucket to grab a single shiner, rarely using a net. But this time, while using a minnow net and re-baiting my lure after catching a fish, I snagged it with my treble hook. This vintage net's material is as tough as Kevlar because I could not unhook the barbs from the mesh. Instead, I had to cut them out, ruining the integrity of the net by creating a hole for scooped minnows to escape. The same hook caught the right sleeve of my sweatshirt while I was unhooking a walleye Friday. The stinger hook was still firmly attached to the tongue of the fish, so I had to awkwardly use the pliers from a small multitool lefthanded to first unhook the fish, then the knife blade to liberate my sleeve from the hook's relentless grasp. Saturday, after unhooking another walleye, I hurriedly reeled in my same lure too far and it somehow went past the rod tip like putting a square peg in a round hole. No matter how I twisted and turned the small treble hook, I had a devil of a time getting it to go out through the in door. After at least five minutes of wrestling with it, I was able to twist it in the right direction like solving a Rubic's Cube. I had a dual case of the dropsies Sunday. As I opened the ice shanty door, I saw my metal ice slusher fall from a nearby hook, drop down the hole and out of sight. Then, after lighting my stove to take away the morning chill, I dropped the end cap of the PVC pipe that I use to carry my lighters into the lake. After fishing and then taking my shanty off the ice without incident Monday, I have avoided becoming a grumpy old man — so far.