It has been five years since my daughters and family have been in Minnesota for Christmas. Coming to our northern state and cold climate is a big change for people that live in Los Angeles. 

My grandkids, ages 13 and 15, had a list of things they wanted to do while staying with us. The list included sledding, walking in the snowy woods, shoveling snow and, of course, ice fishing. 

The first items on the list were pretty easy to take care of. The last item, ice fishing, was a little trickier. 

With the lack of good safe ice, I had limited opportunities to scout for a location that had an aggressive panfish bite taking place. Because of that, we ended up going blind to a local lake that frequently has a respectable bluegill bite. 

We were 50 yards off of the landing before my grandchildren realized they were walking on the lake ice. Although they were well aware of my ice fishing adventures, this was something totally new and unique to them. Something to tell their friends back home! 

Due to busy holiday schedules, we had limited time to fish. Because of this, I was hoping we could find some cooperative biters right away. We didn’t. Although I drilled dozens of holes, we just couldn’t get on top of fish. 

However, there is more to fishing than just the catching. To get the full experience, I let them drill holes with the electric auger and gave them a complete tutorial on how to use and read a Vexilar sonar unit. 

It wasn’t long before they had mastered the jigging technique I showed them and were hole hopping looking for active fish. 

Even though there would be an occasional gill we could entice to examine our bait, the actual bites were few and far between. Although the conditions were tough, they each managed to catch a fish, so all was not lost. 

Eventually, our time was up and we wandered back to the landing. On the walk back, they didn’t seem upset that the catching was so poor. They thought the entire experience was quite fascinating. 

Fortunately, they understood that there really is more to fishing than just the catching. 

This is the opinion of outdoors columnist Jerry Carlson. Contact him at jerrycarlson@cloudnet.com.

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