Winter Sports

ICE AWLS, MOON BOOTS, AND BUMBERSHOOT RIBS

"EVER HAVE ANY EXCITEMENT AROUND HERE?" the motorist asked Glenn Ringe, manager of the Sunrise service station on quiet State Route 273.

"More up at the ski slopes than down here," Ringe said, "but one day toward the spring thaw, I was looking out at the lake [Sunrise], and suddenly eight people dropped through the ice."

"Heavens! What were they doing out there?" "Fishing," said Ringe.

For more than 30 years, I have been a serious sportfisherman. In search of piscatorial adventure, in terrible 10-foot surfs and horrendous squalls, I have fought alongside leathery Australians for mighty mulloway, king mackerel, and other finned Indian Ocean dynamos.

In the Sea of Cortes, along with my fishing compadres, I have endured fear aboard a leaking converted shrimp boat held together by a coat of paint.

I've seen action under the blistering sun of Hawaii, too, at the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament on the Kona Coast. Here my back, arm, and leg muscles twitched with sympathetic pain, while tournament contestants, men and women of many nations, leaned back against thumb-thick fishing rods, hour after hour, sweating, grimacing, battling great marlins and yellowfin tunas, some reputed to approach 1,000 pounds.

At 9,000 feet, Sunrise Lake on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation offers great ice fishing along with magnificent vistas.

ICE AWLS, MOON BOOTS, AND BUMBERSHOOT RIBS

pain, while tournament contestants, men and women of many nations, leaned back against thumb-thick fishing rods, hour after hour, sweating, grimacing, battling great marlins and yellowfin tunas, some reputed to approach 1,000 pounds.

All of these fish fighters even I, once were rugged and robust, stout and stalwart, audacious and tenacious, obstinate, unyielding, uncompromising. But on the fishermen scale of 1 to 10, we are edged out for First-place Glory by men and women and children who sit (or stand) beside small holes drilled (or chopped) into frozen lakes, ponds, and reservoirs, dunking bits of earthworms and other baits, dangling them on monofiliment line connected to wispy little fishing rods. All in quest of fish that rarely weigh more than two pounds. These are "ice-fisherfolk," a breed so tough rumor says the U.S. Postal Service spends considerable time attempting to recruit them. Nobody else can shrug off Sleet, hail, snow, and ghastly cold so nonchalantly. Nobody else can better resist being turned into a block of ice. Only they could give survival lessons to the Abominable Snowman. One of my ice-fishing pals crashed his airplane on top of a glacier-cut Colorado mountain. When his rescuers found him, he was sitting comfortably and unconcernedly in a snowdrift, eating the canned and bottled bait he had planned to use ice fishing.

Back at the Sunrise service station, the motorist continued, "I suppose their bodies have been recovered." "They recovered themselves," Ringe said. "The water was only armpit deep.

They changed clothes and went back out Not many people think of Arizona as an ice-fishing state, except, of course, ice Fishers. Immigrants who grew up in the frozen reaches of places such as Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, and Montana bask in the winter sunshine of the Arizona desert but wake in cold sweats ice fishers, I should mention here, enjoy cold sweats and tell their intimate friends that ice augers (used to bore holes in theice) and ice skimmers (used to free the holes of new-forming ice) repeatedly go dancing through their dreams. For all fisherfolk, Arizona is divided into two parts, the trout-fishing part and the bass-fishing part. To ordinary people, it's the high country and the low country, respectively.

The former, of course, is where ice fishing takes place with the primary focus southeast of Flagstaff at upper and lower lakes Mary, at Ashurst, Mormon, Kinnickinnick, Long, and Stoneman lakes; along the Mogollon Rim at lakes including Blue Ridge, Knoll, Bear Canyon, Woods, Chevelon, and Black Canyon; up on the Navajo Indian Reservation at Wheatfieldsand Tsaile lakes; and the fourth "cold spot" (ice-fisherfolk hate terms like "hot spot"), which includes lakes on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation (which, by the way, the folks who live there prefer to call the White Mountain Apache Indian Reservation), such as Horseshoe Cienega, A-1, and the aforementioned Sunrise; and such off-reservation lakes as Lee Valley, Crescent, Greer, and Big Lake.

Typically, ice fishing is where you find it, and you do not always find it at the above lakes. For example, 1990 was unusually warm, and most lakes below 7,500 feet had ice so thin even ducks were afraid to walk on it. Reports filtered in that scores of ice fishermen women and kids are more cautious gave it a try, but it won't be known if there were any fatalities until pride gives way to practicality, or the lakes are drained.

One ice fisherman, the story goes, is kept in the walk-in freezer at a popular Flagstaff sports tavern, still holding rod and reel. For economic reasons, supposedly, he is to be used as a centerpiece in lieu of a true ice carving at the Arizona Flycasters Club's annual banquet in Phoenix this year.

Other factors also figure into Arizona nice fishing. Example No. 1: the Apache have drained Horseshoe Cienega Lake temporarily because they plan to restock it with bigger and better fish. Example No. 2: if you want to fish Big Lake, you need a snowmobile because the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) closes State Route 273 to conventional vehicles during winter. ADOT feels drifts in these 8,000-plus elevations pile up too deep even for ice fishers. (Blame that notion on inaccurate profiling.) Example No. 3: the Arizona Game and Fish Department uses various and sundry rules and regulations to control various and sundry lakes, which benefit not only fish but fisherfolk. Thus a lake may be closed to fishing or highly restricted.

What all this means is, ice fishers should make inquiries before they slip on their moon boots.

It should be prominent in the minds of fishers, in the interest of safety, that Arizona, unlike "orthodox" ice-fishing states, even at the highest, coldest elevations, can get so much sunshine, you not only can get a serious sunburn, but also fall prey to "rotten" ice, the result of melting and refreezing. Vertical crystals form and anyone who breaks through standing, sitting, lying down is perfectly outlined, making it look as though he had a part in a Roadrunner cartoon.

According to Game and Fish, 10 inches of ice will support a two-ton gross truck; 8 inches, a one-ton gross vehicle. I don't know why they tell us that because it is illegal to drive on Arizona lakes. (Naturally, some uninformed try, but it is usually in the summer while launching a boat.) Game and Fish reports difficulty obtaining reliable ice-depth figures. We know new ice is stronger than old ice, but some confusion exists because snow adds to the illusion of ice thickness. Anyway, two inches of ice adequately supports one man on foot; three inches, a group walking single file. The trailblazer should carry a long pole, crossways, so if he falls through he'll have the pole on which to chin himself to warm up, while he (or his pals) thinks of a way to get back on the ice, so he can crawl to safety, change clothes, and try it again.

As mentioned earlier, ice-fishing lakes are trout lakes, although you might catch a pike or two in Mormon Lake or the Mary lakes, and Stoneman is said to contain perch.

Basically, the lakes are stocked the Indian reservations by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, non-Indian lands by Game and Fish with rainbows, browns, brooks, and native Arizona trout, more often called “Apache trout.” Specific lakes have specific species check this out, too, as things in the fishing world regularly change. All trout are objects of beauty, though the rainbow, considered the least glamorous of the four, gives the best fight.

As in the frozen-waste states up north, about any kind of tackle will serve for Arizona ice fishing. The hook-and-bullet magazines dwell heavily on the right kind of rod.

As a kid, on frozen ponds in northern Kentucky, I did okay with my first “rod,” which was nothing more than a rib from a man's umbrella, a six-foot-long piece of store string, and a small hook. Decades later, I saw a lady who had removed the flexible top section of her spinning rod to ice fish, and I commented, “Don't get much action with the top of your rod gone . . .” She replied, “Ain't after action; after fish.” Today's special ice-fishing rods are little things that look like a kid's toy but are sensitive to the slightest nibble. Now, I regret I didn't hang onto my umbrella rib.

A hypothetical “Catch 22” says if you use heavy line, it will be obvious to the fish, and they may avoid your bait or lure. If you use a light line, the fish will bite, but any prizewinners will most certainly snap the line.

Bob Hirsch, a well-known Arizona ice fisherman, is of the light-line school: “Metabolism slows the fish when it's cold, and they are not as aggressive,” he said. “They don't grab the bait and race away with it like they do in summer.” On the other hand, Victor Velasquez, a White Mountain Apache and an ice fisherman, said, “I use 15-pound line so the fish won't break it while I'm trying to bring it through the hole in the ice.” Skilled ice-fisherfolk know to poke their rods into the ice hole when playing a good-size fish because sharp, jagged pieces of the ice can cut the line if it is allowed to rub against the edge. The recommended size of holes is 10 inches (9 inches by regulation on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation), projecting an element of safety since if you do a few lambada steps to warm up, and miscalculate where you drilled the hole, it isn't big enough to fall through. There have been times when a hooked and played trout had a greater diameter than that of the fishing hole. Needless to say this causes much excitement. Sometimes the hooker screams for a companion to grab some sort of tool to make the hole larger, usually an ax, which can leave said fisherman with only the part of the fish he would have thrown away.

Dave and Byron, two fellows from Tucson, said that contrary to the quiet approach, on Sunrise Lake abundant decibels excite trout.

“Immediately after we drill a new hole, which makes quite a bit of noise, the fish will rush back and forth,” said Byron. “You can see them flashing by the hole.” Obviously what we have here is a fishy example of Pavlov's dog. The trout associate ice augering with food (genetic imprinting?), anticipating kernels of corn, small pieces of worms, salmon eggs, mealworms, and, remarkably, nondigestible lures like jigs and small spinners. This reckless eagerness of trout at Arizona ice-fishing lakes led to a nickname for them: “dummies.” Wiley Monroe, also from Tucson and ice fisherman personified, held up the best catch of the day on Sunrise Lake, a stringer of brook trout up to 12 inches. He said the best bait is a jig with a mealworm impaled upon it.

“Some days the trout like black jigs, some days white jigs, and some days chartreuse jigs,” he said. “Today, chartreuse scores best. You have to experiment.” The theory is that the jig looks like a predatory creature dining on a meal-worm, and trout, being predators themselves, feel compelled to rip off the jigs. Fish, like other species on the planet, are not always wise when it comes to keep-ing their mouths shut.

Personally, I had given up ice fishing forever; I just couldn't handle the floods of self-pity. But iceman Bob Hirsch may have sparked a new interest in it for me: “We were ice fishing on Horseshoe Cienega,” he said. “A Pinetop realtor built a big bonfire on the shore and had two lovely ladies on ice skates running hot tomato juice and coffee to us . . . . . More importantly, as they went by they would pat us on the head and say, 'You poor thing, you poor thing.” That's a nice touch, one ice fishing has always needed.