Ice fishermen, and women, are an obsessive lot. I guess you have to be to drag yourself out onto the ice during the wee hours of a dreary Flathead winter morning. And this winter, now mostly behind us, has been one to test the most OCD ice anglers among us.
While saner folks reveled in the balmy winter, anglers watching the ice cringed whenever temperatures rose into the fleece-is-enough range and they considered the spotty, unstable ice it produced. One fisherman confessed to me that he’d been so desperate for a fix that he used his canoe to paddle out to “stable” ice on Ashley Lake early in the season.
I’m not recommending that behavior by the way.
Ice anglers are equally obsessive about bait. Grubs and maggots are especially popular. One larval offering makes ice anglers knees grow weak at its mere mention: mousies. Here’s a dating tip for any lady aiming to get a man in perch-gut stained Carhartts to follow her around like a puppy. Just head out to the nearest frozen lake and drop hints that you’ve tapped into a reliable supply of mousies. They may be unshaved, and speak more in grunts than words, but they’ll be yours to command, at least until the ice breaks up.
Mousies are larvae of the drone fly and are apparently a little harder to raise than your average maggot, often resulting in shortages when the season gets underway. This scarcity is no doubt amplified by the suggestion that these maggots may find the lower digestive tract of the average human suitable habitat. This trait can take all the fun out of raising them at home.
The allure of the mousie is easy to understand. They look like your average run-of-the-mill maggot, cream or tan in color, except for a rather peculiar appendage measuring twice as long as the grub itself. The appendage is a breathing tube, which allows the critter to burrow into debris or manure to feast on bacteria, yet still draw air at the surface. I’ll leave it to your imagination to sort out how that works in the business end of a naked ape.
Hardcore ice anglers know that if a mousie is carefully hooked just through the skin to avoid vital organs the breathing tube will wave seductively, vainly searching for air when suspended off the lake bottom. Many popular game fish find the mousie’s frantic death throes too seductive to resist.
A man’s bait can be a touchy subject. One angler — who has been bragging about his stash of mousies since December — actually offered me a few. But when I made the mistake of telling him I intended to take photos of the well-endowed larvae to accompany this column his expression grew severe, the color drained from his face, and he quickly rescinded the offer. You’ll have to rely on Google if your curiosity is insatiable. Fortunately, the Internet is a vast sea awash with fish-bait porn.
Anglers can be helpful to a fault, or maddeningly secretive. There have been times I’ve walked out onto the ice without gear, had folks offer me a spare rod, and came home with dinner. But I’ve also heard of ice fishing tournaments that had to do away with observers because the hardcore anglers refused to fish with them. They didn’t want to give away their best spots to strangers.
Speaking of strangers, if you find yourself putting some nice fish on the ice and folks stop by to admire your catch, and if those folks seem to be fussing with some sort of electronic gadget in their coat pocket, be prepared for company. That gadget is likely a GPS unit and your admirers are just fixing your location. They’ll be sitting on your spot the next time you head out to fish.
Don’t fret. Instead, suggest to the interlopers that your neighbor just took in a rush order of mousies from a secretive, Midwestern bait dealer. Tell them her house is easy to find: It’s the one with all the dudes out front doing yard work.
Rob Breeding writes, teaches and watches his kids play soccer when he’s not fishing or hunting. He lives in Kalispell.