Modern Living: The Izaaks of Ice

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Like Hunting Seal. Favorite targets of the ice anglers are the great northern pike, familiarly known as Mister Big Teeth, walleye pike (which are actually members of the perch family), rock bass and lake trout, which in Alaska occasionally weigh as much as 50 Ibs. Some of the more athletic fishermen go after sturgeon with spears through large holes in the ice, like Eskimos hunting seal; they dream constantly of equaling the alltime record of a 310-lb. fish landed in icebound Lake Michigan. Bluegills, crappies, smelt, muskellunge (muskies), whitefish, grayling, skipjacks, sunfish, brown and rainbow trout, and even eels are fair game for the ice fishermen; on Michigan's Lake Charlevoix, an assiduous angler can count on landing 60 Ibs. of smelt in one night.

Those who are hooked on the sport vow that "winter fish" are much tastier than summer catches. And, like the anglers of August, individual ice fishermen swear by their favorite bait. Live minnows are the most popular -often painted red with mercurochrome so the fish can see them-but fish eyes, balls of dough, red worms, silver wigglers, deer-fly larvae, meal worms, dead smelt, corn borers, wax worms, ice flies, crickets, metal lures, and red flannel dipped in bacon grease all have their adherents.

Food prices, of course, have enhanced the lure of winter fishing, but the ravenous anglers seldom have any catch left over to take home. "We sometimes get 50 to 60 perch here on a good weekend," says Steve Weber, 27, proud proprietor of a two-story fishhouse on Minnesota's Lake Mille Lacs. "Then I make a glutton of myself." Maine's Senator Ed Muskie, who worries about his weight, has the same trouble. He often spends weekends back home tucking into the bountiful catch on China Lake. In Muskie's home state, alas, a muskie is hard to find.