Boundarywaters

     It always amazes me how people can catch fish through a hole in the ice.  Ice fishing in the Boundary Waters requires a little more work than fishing from a canoe  in the BWCA during the summertime.  It also requires patience and a little luck to get a fish to pass beneath your hole and get interested enough in your bait to bite it.
     Snowmobiles and power augers are not allowed in the canoe country of the BWCAW.  This means you need to snowshoe or cross-country ski into your wilderness lake destination.  Once you're there you still need to figure out where on the vast BWCA lake you'll drill your hole.  It isn't like trolling the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in the summer because it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to drill a hole through the foot or more of ice to get to the water.  Once you finish drilling a hole drilling another one doesn't sound like much fun.  You hope you've found a spot where the fish will bite and your effort will produce results.
     Boundary Waters fishing in the winter isn't necessarily all about the catch.  But then again, it rarely is.  It's about the wilderness experience, the solitude, fresh air and maybe just a little bit about the possibility of action on the line.