Ice Fishing in Wisconsin

Two women pose on the opening day of sturgeon
ice-fishing season on Lake Winnebago in Pipe,
Wisconsin February 11, 2012. Opening day of sturgeon fishing
in Wisconsin is a day of celebration and socialization
within the communities around Lake Winnebago.
Poor ice conditions and water visibility this year kept a lot
of regulars on shore and away from their fish shanties.
Picture taken February 11, 2012. REUTERS/Sara Stathas

Never took up the ice-fishing invites from friends in Wisconsin.

Somehow, sitting in a shanty on Lake Winnebago—no matter the liquid, mitigating factors inside—never sounded like a lot of fun to me.

But every Winter, Wisconsin's lakes look like villages as 1,000s of ice shanties cover the ice during a period when we hope not too many snowmobilers will smash into the sides of the shandies—a too-often tragic occurrence in these parts.

James Card (NYT) has a piece on Ice Fishing in Wisconsin, noting that the beautiful big Eau Pleine Reservoir had an ice fishing contest that demanded urine samples testing for doping from those ice fishing.

"We did not test for beer, because then everybody would fail," said Joel McDearmon, chair of the United States Freshwater Fishing Foundation.