Fish Out Of Water

What draws people to isolate themselves in shanties on a frozen lake in hopes of spearing a massive sturgeon? Julia Kramer goes fishing.

- Julia Kramer

What draws people to isolate themselves in shanties on a frozen lake in hopes of spearing a massive sturgeon? Julia Kramer goes fishing

I. HOW TO DRIVE ON A FROZEN LAKE

Just to be safe, do not wear a seatbelt. Watch for heaves: ridges of snow indicating that the ice below it has cracked, like the fault line of an earthquake. When you get to a heave, drive alongside it until you find a bridge. In the context of Lake Winnebago in February, a “bridge” is two parallel metal tracks strong enough to support the weight of a pickup, laid down across particularly gaping holes in the ice. And keep the windows rolled down. So you can get out. Just in case the rental car you’re un-seat belted into hits a crack in the ice and plummets into freezing water.

That is the advice given to me—a Chicago-born 30-year-old who has never regular-fished, let alone ice-fished—by the people of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. And it is the advice that I followed over the course of the three days I spent pondering my mortality on a 215-square-mile lake.