Ice Fishing... for rock bass and mud puppies!

Sunday, November 20th, we headed out on the ice. (Dad, the ice is at least 18 inches thick!) The Yoopers have been ice fishing before so we knew what we were doing... Well not actually but we had asked around and had at least some clue what to do and where to go. By the way, we took our fearless leader, Jeannie, out with us. We had been told we could catch some tomcod out in the canal so that is the direction we headed. We set up "camp" and hunkered down for some time on the ice. We chopped a hole til we reached dirt. We filled in that hole and moved out about half way across the canal. Again we chopped our hole and came up with... mud! We decided to pack things up and head back to ask someone that might know what was going on. As we were about to leave, we saw some people coming across the ice. They passed us and stopped just up the canal. We waited to see what they were going to do. We were sure they were laughing at the dumb "kass'aq" who were fishing in the mud.
Patty noticed immediately that they had an auger. We rode down the canal to where they were fishing. It was some of the natives that we knew from our village. They offered to drill us some holes so we were in business. I am not sure how long it was before they decided to move on to another spot but we stayed on for a bit. Jeannie made the comment that the fish just weren't biting when Patty let out a shout that she had one! It was a pretty good size one too, for a smelt that is. Alaskan smelt are huge compared to the little Michigan ones we are used to.
It was an exciting experience and I am sure we'll do lots more fishing but this time we are going to attempt to forfeit the mud puppies and rock bass!
(I'll post some more pictures later.)