The bays are now frozen solid every which way on the Old Mission Peninsula – from Old Mission Point to Bowers Harbor to Bluff Road to the East Bay Boat Launch. It’s fun seeing people wandering about on the ice, walking their dogs, skiing, snowshoeing and, of course, ice-fishing.
The vintage ice-fishing shanties of yore – tiny house-like structures made of plywood, metal and whatever else was handy on the farm – seem to have been replaced by spiffy pop-up tents and other easy-to-haul-and-set-up structures.
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I never spent much time in those old shanties as a kid, but when I did, I just remember it being super cold. I don’t recall there being a heat source. I’m sure the modern ice-fishers have all kinds of cool gadgets to heat their little homes on the ice. And big props to the people who have no shanty at all and sit by their fish line in the windswept, icy landscape.
We did a little ice-fishing off the shore of our beach in Old Mission when I was a kid, but it basically consisted of a little device stuck in a tiny hole in the ice that popped up when there was a fish attached to the other end of it. I’m sure all you ice-fisherpeople are chuckling at my lack of knowledge about everything involved with ice-fishing. I was always more interested in skating.
At any rate, here’s a little photo gallery of some folks ice-fishing around the Old Mission Peninsula. Check the captions for locations.
You can also buy these photos in various formats – canvas, metal, prints, downloads and more – at our sister site, OldMissionPhotos.com, and help support Old Mission Gazette at the same time.
