116 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March, 1919 
LAKE ERIE HUT FISHING 
ONE OF THE MOST ALLURING OF WINTER SPORTS WHICH IN- 
CIDENTALLY COMBINES RECREATION WITH FINANCIAL GAIN 
By JEFFERSON WILLIAMSON 
The huts are made of the lightest materials to enhance their portability 
F ishing 
in huts far 
out on the 
midwinter ice of 
Lake Erie is a 
novelty among 
pastimes that is 
growing rapidly 
in popularity. 
For several years 
this style of fish- 
ing was carried 
on purely as a 
commercial prop- 
osition, but such 
is no longer the 
case. Piscatori- 
ally inclined busi- 
ness and profes- 
s i o n a 1 men of 
Cleveland, Toledo, 
Detroit and other 
cities have found 
it to be one of the 
most alluring of 
sports and are in- 
vading the field 
in increasing 
numbers each 
winter. 
The originator 
of hut fishing is 
said to have been 
Frank Shirley, a 
boatbuilder and 
skipper residing 
in Lakeside, Ohio, 
a short distance 
west of Cleveland. 
He is accredited 
with being the father of “Piketown,” 
which is probably the largest of the hut 
fishing colonies on the southern side of 
Lake Erie. Last winter “Piketown” 
consisted of some 300 huts, about eighty 
percent of which were used by commer- 
cial fishermen and the rest by men who 
liked the sport and did not care a rap 
about the money there was in it. And 
last year, incidentally, there was extra- 
ordinarily big money in it — net profits 
ranging anywhere from $25 to $75 a day. 
At 15 and 16 cents a pound, undressed, 
the catch has to be considerable to total 
$75, as a simple process of mathematics 
easily demonstrates. The prices were 
higher last winter due to the war, with 
its resultant conservation of meats, and 
this provided an eager market for all 
the fish that could be caught. 
j 
T he favorite hut fishing grounds are 
at Monroe Piers, Mich., a few miles 
south of Detroit, at Toledo Beach, 
about eight miles south of Monroe Piers, 
and the shoals in the vicinity of Put- 
in Bay. But the fishing is done more or 
less almost anywhere on the southern 
side of the lake — Ballast Island, Starve 
Island, Middle Bass, Rattlesnake, Green 
Island, these are but a few of the haunts 
of the fishermen. 
The fishermen go out anywhere from 
half a mile to more than two miles off 
shore. You will find venturesome ones 
out two and a half miles on the steamer 
lane in what is known as the South Pas- 
sage, where the water is thirty feet deep 
or more. But as a rule, the average 
fisherman is content to remain closer in- 
shore. The fishing is satisf 3 dng there 
and the risks are fewer. 
The fishing generally begins in Jan- 
uary, after the low December tempera- 
tures have hardened the ice to a thick- 
ness of from six to eighteen inches and 
continues until the end of February or 
as late as the middle of March. It all 
depends on the condition of the ice, and 
that, in turn, of course is dependent on 
the weather. 
The shanties, or huts, in which the 
fishing is done generally are six feet 
long, four wide and seven high. They 
are made of the lightest of materials to 
enhance their portability. On a two-by- 
one-inch wooden framework canvas is 
tacked, sometimes burlap bags, some- 
times tin sheeting. But the ideal cov- 
ering is canvas. There is a door, of 
course, and a 
small window, 
but the window is 
kept heavily 
blinded while the 
fishing is being 
done. The fisher- 
man uses it only 
when he wants to 
peer out occasion- 
ally for one rea- 
son or another. 
But while he is 
fishing he must 
have darkness, 
absolute darkness. 
In this darkness 
the fisherman sits 
on a stool and 
peers down into 
the hole he has 
cut through the 
ice. This hole 
should be about 
15 inches wide 
and 24 to 30 in- 
ches long, chipped 
away slantingly 
underneath so the 
fisherman can see 
the approach of 
the fish before it 
reaches the hole 
proper. It is so 
clear in the dark- 
ness that the sand 
bottom is visible 
and the antics of 
the cannibalistic 
pike as they grab 
for the decoy can be observed clearly 
in every detail. Any moving object can 
be seen clearly in the water. The prin- 
ciple is the same as that of the Catalina 
Island glass bottomed boats. 
There is one other requisite in the 
construction of the hut. Its canvas roof 
must have a chimney, for ventilation, a 
chimney say about a foot high, with a 
raised hood. This ventilator is an ab- 
solute necessity as will be seen farther 
on. 
When the fisherman has located his 
hut, the first thing he does is to bed 
its base with snow. This helps to an- 
chor it, assures its stability against the 
forty-mile breezes that are quite com- 
mon on Lake Erie in midwinter. It also 
adds to the interior warmth of the hut. 
But warmth is an easy problem, for 
each hut is provided with a diminutive 
stove, usually oil burners, which make 
the hut so cozy that the fisherman per- 
spires in his shirt sleeves. 
In addition to bedding snow around 
the base of the hut, the fisherman usually 
takes extra precautions to see that his 
structure will “stay where it is put,” by 
anchoring it with light ropes and wooden 
pegs driven into the ice. 
