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UNIQUE ICE FISHING EXPEDITION Fishing is a merry sport with lots of thrills sometimes real hardships and even danger but I doubt if many lovers of the rod have had quite such an experience as that which I went through nine days one winter not so long back in ful ¬ filling an assignment to secure a number of specimen fish for an aquarium in Chicago ChicagoIt It happened that a number of specimens of lake sturgeon smallmouth Jass large catfish wall ¬ eyed pike and certain other lake denizens were much desired for the use of this aquarium Fur ¬ thermore it was decided that the ideal place to obtain the same would be a certain body of water known as fake Poygan near AVinuccoiuic AVR AVRHere Here commercial fishermen made it a practice to seine fish through the ice and of course it was from frozen waters that such specimens must be secured at that particular season of the year yearTo To assure me of the pleasant days to come a snow storm held our train hours late getting to Berlin where we were to change trains As a result we had the pleasure of spending two days there until the snow blockade of the branch to AVinwcoiine was overcome Then all we had to do was take a tenmile drive against a wind that cut to the marrow with the thermometer at 20 below zero in order to reach fake Poygnn PoygnnHere Here the interesting situations began The seine which the fishermen were using was 11000 yards in Ingth with a sixtyfoot center When I saw this I wondered how in the world they were ever going to get it under the frozen surface of the lake for the ice was fortytwo inches thick Heres the way they tackle a job like that thatThe The seine was first stacked on the ice in two piles beginning at the center It had to be laid out carefully so as to prevent tangling To the brail or end of the seine a heavy hawser is fas ¬ tened and to this a lighter line with a needle is attached This needle is not the kind through the eye of which the camel found so much difficulty in passing It is a long strip of flat board eight inches wide and half an inch thick and twelve feet long longHoles Holes an then chopped through the ice no little job in itself when you consider the thickness of the ice These holes spaced about eighteen feet apart extended away from the seine in either direction in srinicircular frm The needle is then started under the ice and pushed from hole to hole a pike pole being used for this propelling purpose Gaso ¬ line winches are utilized for hauling the seine AVhen the brail is reached the winches are shifted from time to time witli the center of the seine seinefake fake Poygan is noted for its fine collection of snags logs and tree stumps on the lake floor As a result it is a difficult proposition to land the seine when it has filled with fish A large opening was ut through the ice to land the seine through and then work began beganAVe AVe had to make five hauls before we attained success Consider that it requires an entire day to make a haul and you will realize that this was some fishing expedition Then it takes another day to mend the nets In our first four hauls the nets became entangled with the obstacles under the ice and badly torn so the fish were let out through the holes and vents made in the netting nettingIt It was the fifth haul that spelled success for me In she came with twentyfive large sturgeon seme too large to handle They measured eight and ten feet in length Then there were hundreds of small mouth bass and all sorts of small game fish ami I estimated some iiOOO coarse fish which are all the fishermen are allowed to take After the specimens for which I had permits had been selected the rest of the fish were replaced in the water I selected one fine sixfoot sturgeon twentyfive small mouth bass which ranged from three to six pounds in weight several large catfish fifteen walleyed pike four pickerel and ten eels eelsI I was on the lake for nine days After each haul we drove back t town Following the suc cosfui haul we started for AVinneconne AVe had to walk ahead of the horses most of the trip It was necessary to cut a large hole in the ice of the river to put the dummy net in to keep the fish over night nd it was also requisite that I stay up all night and watch the net so that no Indians or halfbreeds could slip up and make away with the fish fishOn On the train I carried the fish in special tanks fifteen in number On the trip I spent nights in the cold caring for the fish for they must be care ¬ fully tended to keep them alive It is absolutely necessary n a trip such as this to keep the water aerated This task was performed by dipping the water and turning it back into tin tank tankI I got ba k to Chicago without losing a fish H was certainly s mie trip the most unique fishing experience I have ever had hadIIowil IIowil you like to do the Izauk AValton stunt this warV George K Case in American Field
