Living in northern Minnesota in the winter can really wear on a person so much so that we sit in small shacks on the ice to get a fishing fix. I was actually going to build one of these shacks last fall but got asked to house sit in Los Angeles. This was the first winter in about five years that I actually missed out on the whole ice fishing season. You would have thought I would have quit a few years ago when I almost died in one of these fish houses.
About two years ago I was on Lake of the woods, the very northern tip of Minnesota, with a couple of buddies. It was the second year that I had gone up there to rent an ice house that actually has beds in it so you can spend the night. My friend Lance had done it a couple more time as he got in the habit of bringing a carbon monoxide detector with since every year there is at least one person that dies from CO2 poisoning up there.
Since the fishing dies off at night there we hit the sack pretty early only to wake up at 2 in the morning to the alarm going off and two of us feeling really sick. The only thing we could think to do was to open the door about 6 inches and let the place air out. Luckily we all woke up in the morning though we were kind of upset by the lack of interest from the guy we rented the house from when we got picked up.
Now the ice is too thin to get out and fish the lakes but in one more week trout season opens around here and I think I can wait that long to get a fishing fix in.
