This Saturday marks the opening day of trout season in Minnesota and I am anxious to start seeing some ice shacks on the lake. I used to boast about fishing naked (without shelter) in the winter but anymore I prefer some type of house with heat to spend the day on the ice.
A minimum of 12 inches of solid ice is required to safely drive a truck on a lake and most of the lakes on the Gunflint Trail have at least that much ice—however Gunflint Lake has not been frozen very long and should be checked first. I was told that there were only four inches of ice in the middle of Gunflint Lake on New Year’s Day, so it is hard to say how much ice we have made since then.
I am trying to get my house out on Loon Lake this week for no other reason than it is very close to our home. Loon has a nice population of trout that can sometimes be very hard to coerce into biting, but my family will get a lot more use out of the shack if we keep it convenient to access. January is always a difficult month to get the kids outside in the extremely cold temperatures and high winds. It will be fun to have a heated ice house to play in while it is nasty outside.
Ice shacks are very popular and few buildings conjure as much pride and creativity in Minnesota as outhouses and ice shacks. I love the concept: for a small “ice house permit” fee you can squat on a piece of lake anywhere in Minnesota for a few months every winter. If you don’t like your neighbors or the fishing isn’t good you can move.
I searched the Internet for some ice shack design inspiration and was amazed at the number of shacks that find themselves above lakes in Minnesota. Much like cabins on the Gunflint Trail, ice shacks range from state of the art campers with tongue and groove pine paneling and forced air furnaces to home-made repurposed and recycled shacks resurrected from the local salvage yard. Aerial photos of Mille Lacs Lake show perfectly plowed roads with shacks and parking spots that looked like a suburb. Just think of how many baited hooks are dangling underneath all of those houses on a busy weekend.
Ice fishing isn’t as big of a deal on the Gunflint Trail, but a few shacks stake their ground on some of the bigger lakes each winter. A nice shack to fish out of can be more comfortable than fishing from a boat during the open water season. I know some people that fish more in the winter than they do in the summer time for that very reason. I am not one of those people, mostly because I like to fish a lot of spots in a day and ice shacks are not always easy to move around.
Cory Christianson has worked as a fishing guide on the Gunflint Trail since 2000. If you have any fishing or wildlife reports or stories to share, send an email to: christiansoncory@hotmail.com or call 218- 388-0315. You can also visit Cory’s website at Gunflintfishingguide.com.
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