He was so-o-o sensitive. We'd have lines in the same hole -- perhaps only a few feet apart. I had no action. Barney's was constant. "There!" he'd whisper. "Go ahead and take . . . oh! I got a nibble. There's another, see?"

I could hold onto Barney's line and feel nothing happening. Then the guy would jerk his rod and laugh as it bent double. Soon he'd lay a twenty-inch trout alongside the other two he'd already taken that day. Meanwhile I would turn up my jacket collar, thrust hands deep into trousers' pockets and contemplate a distant mountain's navel.

Contrast Barney with the midwest writer working on a magazine story who, during research, reached me by telephone. "Are you into ice fishing, Roland?"

"Nope. Not me. I tried it. Twice. Froze out, stove up, and didn't catch a fish."

There was silence on his end, so I added, "I've never tried an ice house, though. Maybe I could find winter fishing more tolerable from a cozy-warm shelter."

He chuckled. "That was what I was just going to say; I was just like you -- ice fishing and me didn't get along until I tried it from an ice house. The ones we use are of lightweight nylon, with an aluminum frame. They can be set up with a flip of the wrist."

"They'd never stand up to the wind at Duck Lake."

"Yeah they would. I've fished in 'em when the wind was blowing a gale."

I laughed. "The prairie winds take boxcars off railroad tracks at Browning."

"Anyway," he said, "you ought to see how well set up we are. We have these little one-person ice houses that collapse onto a sled. Say a half-dozen of us go fishing out on a lake. We'll scatter, with each pulling his sled to a different spot. We drill holes, then pop up the ice house and drop our depth finder in . . ."

"What? Depth finder?"

"Yeah, it's got a fish locator on it, too. Mine's pretty sophisticated. You can even see the fish coming."

"You've got to be kidding!"

"Each of us carry a two-way radio, too," he said. "We keep moving and drilling holes until somebody finds where the fish are. Then he gets on his radio and pretty soon there's a half-dozen ice houses clustered in a group."

"All with depth finders and fish locators dangling beneath the ice?"

"Yep. We can heat coffee and talk back-and-forth on our radios and watch for fish coming our way. "I'll bet you'd like that."

I held the phone away, lip curling. Then I moaned, "Barney. What about the way Barney did it?"

"Who's Barney?"

 

Next week? Another walk on the wild side.