Jan. 29, 1910 ] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
181 
morning?” asked the doctor as he climbed into 
the sleigh. 
“Ten below,” I answered. It was a perfect 
winter morning. Either side of the wood road, 
which led to our lake, the trees were loaded 
with snow and appeared as though carved out 
of white marble by some master sculptor. 
The woods were absolutely silent, even the sen¬ 
timental pine and fir forgot to whisper and stood 
with bowed heads meditating. The only sound 
was that of our one-horse rig as it made its way 
through the loose snow. The doctor's single 
comment during our half hour's ride was: “In 
all of Florida there is nothing so beautiful.” 
When we reached the lake we selected a shel¬ 
tered spot near the road, and having tramped 
down the snow, left the horse there, warmly 
We set to work with a will to collect firewood 
and presently the dry pine and cedar were snap¬ 
ping and cracking away in a manner good to 
hear. 
“Now,” shouted the jovial doctor, “I’ll teach 
you how to cut a hole through thick ice.” 
“Teach me how to cut a hole!” I repeated. 
“Why, all a fellow has to do is to take an axe 
and hammer away.” 
“You never made a greater mistake in your 
life. There is a right way and a wrong way 
for doing anything, and the right way is the 
easy way when you know how. Now, some ice 
fishermen—on paper—tell us that we should sim¬ 
ply cut a circle in the ice around a solid core 
and when we have cut through the ice, lift out 
the core intact, and presto! we have the hole 
I don’t care to put my.hands into that water un¬ 
less I have to.” 
“Could we use the pail I brought along to 
steep the tea in?” I asked. 
“The very thing; and say, you better look at 
these worms. If they are frozen take them 
over to the fire and thaw them out. .While you, 
are doing that I will cut another hole.” I found 
the worms a solid mass and placed them by 
the fire to thaw out, while I skimmed the ice 
out of the first hole. That done I called the 
doctor to bait the hook. 
“Baiting up,” said he, “is the most disagree¬ 
able part of ice fishing. Now I’ll thread, the 
fellow on the hook just as though it were sum¬ 
mer time,” and he took off his mittens to do it. 
“There,” he said, “get that fellow into the water 
THIS TIP-UP CAUGHT FOUR TIMES AS MANY FISH AS ANY OTHER ONE. 
blanketed and contentedly munching the hay 
which had kept our feet warm during the drive. 
We shouldered our outfit and set out upon the 
lake. One of the advantages of ice fishing is 
that the paraphernalia is neither burdensome nor 
cumbersome. We found little loose snow upon 
the surface of the lake, for previous to the 
storm there had been several inches of water 
on~ top of the ice, and the snow falling into the 
water had congealed solidly, a fortunate circum¬ 
stance for . us, otherwise the walking would have 
been difficult. 
“Now,” said my companion, “where do you 
catch perch in summer time?” 
“Just about four rods outside that fringe of 
reeds,” I replied; “the water is eight to twelve 
feet deep there.” 
“The place looks good to, me,” said the doc¬ 
tor,. and throwing down his bundle of tip-ups, 
continued: “But first of all we must build a 
fire, for our hands will nearly freeze when it 
comes to baiting hooks.- We will build the fire 
in the lee of that point.” 
complete. Unfortunately it does not work out 
in practice as it does on paper. Unless the cir¬ 
cle be dangerously large, that “solid core” is 
going to break and you will have gained noth¬ 
ing by your unnecessary labor; by ‘dangerously 
large’ I mean large enough for a man to fall 
through. Furthermore, if the hole be too large 
it will be difficult to support the tip-up.” 
He simply cut a,long gash in the ice not over 
eighteen inches wide and narrowing as he de¬ 
scended. When chopping became difficult, and 
you will readily see that chopping a long in¬ 
cision was less difficult than it would have been 
in a round hole, he took the chisel and soon the 
water was bubbling to the . surface. 
“.You see. the advantage of the chisel?” re¬ 
marked "my instructor, when working under 
water. “With an axe I would be .splashing the 
water, all over myself, but as it is I splash water 
only when J am careless. Now we will dip out 
the floating pieces of ice and ream out the bot¬ 
tom of the hole. Thunder, man,”, he exclaimed, 
“we forgot to bring a long-handled dipper and 
before he freezes solid while I go warm my 
hands,” and he ran over to the fire, swinging 
his arms and yelling like a Sioux Indian. 
I broke the thin film of ice that had already 
formed on the surface of the water and lowered 
the hook until it hung suspended within two or 
three feet of the bottom. It was easy to see 
the bottom by bending low over the hole and 
shutting out all the light possible with my hands, 
then I wound all the line not used around the 
end of the tip-up and fastened it with a half 
hitch. I next slipped, a small stick cut for the 
purpose through the hole in the tip-up and laid 
it upon the surface of the ice, the little end of 
the tip-up just over the center of the* hole. 
The doctor examined my work and pro¬ 
nounced it well done. “Do you know,” said he, 
“we will be compelled to go around every now 
and then and break the ice about the lines or 
they will freeze in and the tip-ups will refuse 
to work, but we will want something to do 
after we get the holes cut. Now let’s get busy.” 
We worked as though our lives depended 
