Comfort and joy in a fish house

ON UPPER RED LAKE -- Overnight here on Sunday, an incessant wind hurled across miles and miles of ice before enveloping a small village of fish houses about 2 miles from shore. From these sleeper shanties no one would be returning to land until morning, and then, with luck, with a few fish in a bucket.

My friend Spider Johnson rents fish houses on this lake, and I had contracted for a home-away-from-home from him. Two bunks. A heater. A table. Insulated walls. Six holes in the floor from which to dangle minnows and jigs. Perfect.

So much so that among winter pastimes in Minnesota sleeping on frozen water should rank near the top. Except for the ice creaking and groaning, there isn't a quieter place in the state. And any concerns that might trouble you seem never quite to make it very far onto the ice from shore. A peaceful hideout, this, just you and the still snow and creaking ice for miles, beyond which, hereabouts, lie endless miles of jack pine, tamarack and aspen.

Yet Upper Red Lake -- part of the Upper and Lower Red Lake complex, most of which is controlled by the Red Lake band of Chippewa -- has been beset by challenges this winter, as have most Minnesota lakes. Early cold produced early ice, which was good. But then came deep snow, slowing ice formation and, soon, producing slush.

"We couldn't get out as far as we wanted in December," Spider said. "We had some good fishing. But it would have been better if we could have gotten where we wanted to be."

Originally from Spicer, Spider 10 years ago traded his life there as a contractor for one here in the far north as a summer fishing guide and, in winter, a fish-house rental person.

Ironically, the fish that originally drew him here -- crappies, and big ones -- aren't so plentiful anymore in Upper Red.

I said I did. Fifteen-inch crappies, after all, are difficult to forget.

But as it happened, crappies were an anomaly for Upper Red, the product, amazingly, of one super year class, 1995, which occurred at a unique juncture in the fish history of both Upper and Lower Red lakes.

The crappies were only filling a void left by the lakes' remarkable walleye population, which had existed at high levels for centuries before they were nearly netted to extinction by the Red Lake Band of Chippewa and, to some degree, poached by non-band members.

So few walleyes remained in the lake in 1999 that the Department of Natural Resources ended hook-and-line fishing for them. Some people thought the lake would never bounce back -- incredible since it once had so many walleyes the government during World War I opened a processing plant on its shores to help alleviate food shortages.

But credit the DNR, whose biologists said they believed walleyes could be restored in Upper and Lower Red. Together with the Red Lake band, the agency stocked millions of walleye fry in 1999, 2001 and 2003 at a shared cost of about $500,000.

Suddenly, on a winter's day, 10,000 anglers or more could be found on the ice, jigging for black slabs -- and finding them.

• • •

Spider showed me my house and headed home. He hadn't been gone a half-hour when I had my first fish, a 13-inch walleye that under other circumstances I might have kept, but on this late afternoon -- considering the bite happened so quickly -- I released, thinking I would find bigger specimens.

Upper Red is essentially a big dish, mostly 14 feet deep, and my plan wasn't complicated: On one rattle wheel I rigged a small jig, with a fathead hooked through the tail. Through another hole I dropped a BuckShot rattlespoon with a minnow head. Both baits were day-glow, and I "flashed" them before dropping each to about 6 inches from the bottom.

Not far from my house were a handful of Spider's other sleepers, each rented by a friendly group from Willmar. But as night fell, the wind turned gale-force, limiting any inter-house visiting. If you left one shanty seeking another, you might never find it, or your way back.

And I did. Not once but twice. But both times I missed the fish, probably because I was too slow climbing down from the bunk to set the hook. Or perhaps, as Spider had warned me, the fish were biting light, and they would have escaped me regardless.

At sunup, a wheel rattled again. This time the eternal man-fish battle was won by man, and a plump 15-incher soon flopped on the house floor.

Across the ice, the wind had died, and one by one the odd angler revealed himself outside his little ice home. Some had walleyes, some didn't.

A good place to wake up, fishing.

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com