Emma Tocci/Collegian
Leroy Sandahl takes a break for lunch after fishing.
The pleasure inherent in most pastimes is fairly self-evident. The pleasure of ice fishing is less obvious.
Rising in the 4 a.m. darkness of midwinter to drill through several inches of ice, to sit in a shanty dangling a gossamer thread through the gemmy olivine water is not everyone's idea of how to spend a Saturday.
Across the Midwestern states studded with frozen lakes in winter, however, the pleasure far outweighs the pain, and thousands grace the ice every winter. To celebrate ice fishery, the Hillsdale County Conservation Club held its 45th annual Tip Up Festival Jan. 28-30 at its lodge in Osseo, Mich.
On Saturday, Tip Up mayor, James Ward, reckoned that between 5,000 and 6,000 people would take part in the weekend's events and that most everyone would be back on Sunday afternoon for the cash drawing because the ticket holder had to be present to win.
Ward said that when it comes to outdoors sports: “We all like to think we're professional, but we know better than that. People just like to hunt and fish—that's how this club got started.”
He said the club is for everyone; a family place. Clusters of children wearing camouflage-garb and eating cheesy fries confirmed it.
The walls of the stark concrete hall were lined with stalls offering hotdogs, beer, jerky and taxidermy. Behind one fur-laden table stood the Sparks family: parents Roger and Lisa with Shane, 19, Priscilla, 16, Lacy, 14, Lonni, 12, Dallas, 9, and Jasmine, 6.
They all help with the family taxidermy and hunting novelty shop, Heads and Tails, on Ball Road in Hillsdale. Roger and Shane do the dirty work of skinning and gutting, along with most of the taxidermy—although Pricilla displayed the button buck she once taxidermed, and the other girls have been known to get their hands dirty, too.
Shane has been tanning hides for the past two years and said he is considering doing it professionally because he “enjoys the beauty of the finished skins … [and] has patience for the long processes.”
The Sparks family also sells novelty items such as deer leg lamps, deer leg thermometers and European (skull) mounts.
Roger said that because they have both fur buying and taxidermy licenses, “We can mount most anything you want.”
“If you have a log cabin and decide you want a grizzly bear or caribou or fox, zebra, buffalo, pheasants … we can buy it and mount just about anything,” he said.
MEANWHILE AT BAWBEESE
Cigarette stubs lay scattered on the ice rutted with footprints, but by afternoon on Baw Beese Lake everything was quiet outside the shanties. Some of the anglers had left to warm up and find lunch, but many would be back in the evening.
One voice escaped from a hut, “Oh man, my foot's asleep.”
Inside Josh Smith, 16, Cody Crites, 15, and Cody Lucas, 15, sat in warm darkness, fishing for bluegill with little luck. Earlier a muskrat had poked his head through the opening but their fish-shaped underwater camera showed little activity under the ice.
Many boys said they began ice fishing with their fathers when they were about eight years old and now think nothing of hitting the ice before dawn with their friends.
Smith said the lake is sometimes eerie, though.
“You should hear it when it's making ice,” he said. “You know how whales sound? It kind of sounds like you're going in.”
“Look at that dude!” Smith cried. In the monitor a 30-inch pike circled the bluegill camera, interested in a meal.
“That thing must weigh about 10 pounds at least,” Crites guessed.
When the pike swam away the boys said they were relieved that he didn't bite their lines, which were delicately hooked for smaller fish.
“Even so, that would've been a rush,” Smith said.
The boys said they were not registered for the Hillsdale Tip Up because their basketball game was on registration, but they said they might register for Quincy's Tip Up Feb. 11-13.
Later in the afternoon, Cody said another, larger, pike came. The fish was too large to see through the small fishing holes in the ice, but judging by his head and width, Crites said the pike must [“have been”?] be near five feet long.
Crites said when he saw the fish: “I was yelling everything! I've never seen a fish like that even in a magazine.”
The sighting rekindled Cody's earlier pike fishing aspirations, and that evening the boys bought wire line and heavier gear to withstand a pike's sharp teeth.
“Next Sunday we'll go out there again,” Cody said. “I'll try to catch him.”