By Susan DeGrane
But most of the people here are like Kenny Schneider, die-hard fishermen who refuse to lay down their poles for an entire winter. Schneider’s facing surgery for a torn rotator cuff. “It hurt so bad it got to where I couldn’t lift the pole anymore, so I figured I better do something about it.”
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“It’s a very small group of people who fish to begin with,” says Henry Palmisano, the owner of Henry’s. “If you consider what percentage of those people are ice fishermen, it’s an even smaller group.”
Gruenwald details special methods employed by the Swedish ice-fishing team he competed against in the 1991 World Ice Fishing Championship. Among their secrets are considering the terrain of lake bottoms from the fish’s perspective, using lake maps, switching to smaller line and lures, treading lightly and quietly on the ice, moving around frequently to find the fish, leaving ice chips in the holes to block out sunlight, and using artificial baits and weights to penetrate the water.
Poppee and Walt Matan, a father and son design team for Custom Jigs & Spins, speak after Gruenwald. They spend an hour telling corny jokes and explaining the uses of jigs with names like Ratso, Rat Finkee, Shrimpo, and Stripper Special. They emphasize the need to vary bait presentation to cater to the subtle preferences of the fish–some are attracted to grubs and maggots that hang vertically, others prefer them served horizontally–and like Gruenwald and the Swedish champions advocate moving frequently to determine where the fish are. As an aside, the men reveal their personal recipe for success: dad sits over a hole as the son drills the openings in the ice.
“I watched my friend waving his arms like a windmill, even though he was only about waist deep,” Brannan says. “He tore the hell out of the ice.”
