Ice Fishing

I had no sooner gotten back from Magadan than I got a call from Vincent, the Taiwanese Rotary exchange student, inviting me to go ice finishing with him and a friend of ours. I jumped at the chance, and was the most excited about going fishing than I have ever been.

I had to wake up early, before it was light. I stumbled about, rubbing my sleepy eyes, trying not to wake everyone else. I filled a thermos with hot tea and bundled up with two sweaters, two pairs of socks, padded pants, several pairs of gloves, a scarf, my hat, and then my coat and boots. I had to wait forty minutes for the bus to meet my friends in the city center; thus by the time we even got to the ocean my feet were freezing. There were four of us going:Vincent, his host brother Andrey, and our friend Denis, who was the one who actually had the equipment. 

We made our way across the ice to about fifty meters out, where we drilled our first holes. Denis was equipped with a fishing box and the drill. The drill was a hefty thing, about as tall as Denis himself, shaped much like an old fashioned hand-powered drill. He drilled four holes in the ice, each about two meters apart. He leaned on the top of the drill, and cranked the middle handle. The snow and ice was brought up and out of the hole, and was churned into a soft moundaround the drill head. The ice at the first spot was about six inches deep, but farther out where we fished later, it was almost half a meter. 

After sinking the holes, Denis opened his box and pulled out four fishing poles, each about a foot long. They were electric green plastic, and had fishing lines with six or seven hooks, each six inches apart, with pieces of bright, colorful plastic stuck onto them. Each of us dropped our lines into our holes and lightly bobbed them up and down. We repeated this process in two places, and we would have continued, except for the fact that we weren't even getting bites.

It was a beautiful, cold morning, with not a cloud in sight. Across the ice there were figures, maybe fifty in all, of other ice fishermen hunched over on their boxes, bobbing their poles up and down. The bay was completely frozen, and you could walk all the way across to the islands on the other side. "About an hour's walk," said Denis. Ships plowthrough the ice to get to the open sea; the paths they cut freezing over, creating slick, blue rivers through the snow-covered ice, which we slipped across to get  to the good fishing spots. 

The city was spread along the shoreline, and I could even see my apartment building a ways away. Turning in a circle, I saw my city: the white expanse of ice dotted with ice fishermen, out across that, the snow covered islands,and finally the break to the open ocean. My sight was lined with the fur on my hood, and I felt quite Russian.

The only drawback was the cold. The temperature wasn't too bad, and the wind was hardly noticeable; however, no matter how thick the soles of your boots are, the cold from the ice seeps through to your feet, and there is no relief. My feet suffered the worst, my hands were swollen by the time I got home, and towards the end, the cold even seeped through my coat, sweatshirt and sweater. I couldn't feel my legs, so I don't know how they felt. I don't know how Denis sits on the ice for hours fishing, as he goes quite often. He didn't seem to be affected by the cold as he layon the snow, texted with bare fingers, and drank coke, slushy with ice. 

We returned frozen and empty-handed, but it was a fantastic experience. I limped home, as I forgot money for the bus, and was happy to finally be here, with a hot cup of tea.