Ice fishing in Minnesota -- and why

StarTribune ^ | 12/16/08 | Doug Smith

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

Ice fishing is ubiquitous in Minnesota, home to the largest ice angler population in the nation.

Most of us don't give a second thought when thousands of ice fishing houses and thickly dressed anglers show up each winter on frozen lakes and rivers around the state.

That just happens here.

But it's also what makes us unique.

"Ice fishing is this really distinctive thing of living up north; people who don't live here think it's nutty," said Greg Breining of St. Paul.

And, of course, staring for hours into a faintly illuminated hole bored through the ice is a little bit nutty. But several hundred thousand of us do it anyway.

Breining, 56, a freelance writer, and friend Layne Kennedy, 51, a freelance photographer from Minneapolis, both long noticed that intriguing things happen each winter from Moorhead to Montana and from Maine to Moscow when soft water turns hard.

So, of course, they wrote a book about it.

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

The “Greenies” stopped that practice many years ago. even tho’ the wrecks were stripped of all their fluids and batteries and nasty stuff.....

Fun, not allowed.....