On 1/30/1988, I had just turned 6 five days earlier. I was on Lake Sakakawea ice fishing with my dad like usual. Being from Williston, ND, Sakakawea was practically in our back yard and we were ice fishing an area called “Lake Jesse”, which is on the far West end of the lake and only about a 20 minute drive from our house.
According to my dad, it had been slow, well, slow for walleyes at least, but I didn’t care as I was slaying the fish. I was on my knees on the floor in front of “my hole”, which was simply one of the ice holes in the corner by the front door. We were in my dads homemade ice house. It was 10’ x 14’ and he had 4 holes in total, 1 in each corner. His hole was in the back corner where he sat at a table, near the stove and I would get one of the holes by the front door. In ND, it’s 4 lines per person, so that meant we also had 6 lines outside. Many people use tip ups, but my dad had ones called “pop ups” and he still has them today and they still work pretty slick.
I was watching the bobber intently on a rattle reel, with the line already in my hand, with a foot or so of slack and would jig the bobber a little and then put it back down on the water. I believe it was late morning and the shiners as we called them were thick this year. Technically, this type of fish is called a mooneye, but we called them shiners. The locals treated them as a rough fish, people always threw them back in and never considered eating them. My dad basically viewed them as piranhas, since they school up real heavy and once they lock in and find your bait, they constantly go after your minnows. The worst part is, sometimes they’ll take your bobber under or set your tip up off, but many times they’ll steal your bait without triggering a bite. That’s not ideal, since you want your minnows dangling down there when the walleyes come through. Regardless, I didn’t care about any of that, it was action and I just wanted to see my bobber go under, again, again, and again and that day it did.
I believe it was Saturday morning. Our normal routine was to go out to our ice house on Friday evening and come back Sunday morning. Now keep in mind, this was before ice castles and all the fancy houses they have now with bunks, beds, etc. The inside of our house had a couch on one side, a table and chairs on the other with a furnace near it, and then at the back of the house we had a 2 burner stove, with some cabinets. So very bare bones, but it was perfect. He would lay a space blanket down on the floor and we would sleep on top of it with our sleeping bags. If it was just us, one of us would take the couch, but if my sister and brother were with or any combination of that, my dad and I always took the floor, since I’m the oldest. The only tricky thing was his furnace and usually he shut it off at night. It was apparently very old and he worried if it went out, we could be dealing with carbon monoxide poisoning. So prior to bed, we would each go pee outside, shut the door, shut the furnace off, and bury ourselves deep in our sleeping bags. Naturally, I would still get up in the middle of the night when I heard the sweet sound of a rattle reel going off ….Outside of rattle reels, I avoided getting out of my cocoon, until my dad got the furnace back on in the morning. Now keep in mind, ND isn’t necessarily known for its warm winters and many times it was 20-40 below zero, without the wind chill! It was fine, I was at my happy place. We usually put our house out around Christmas every year and it didn’t come off until March. We would pretty much go every weekend, regardless of the weather. If it was going to be cold, he would just stock up with an extra propane tank or two.
Now keep in mind, this is one of my earlier memories, so some of this story is foggy to me, but my dad remembers it all well. I was absolutely putting a beatdown on the shiners and had already caught about 20 that morning. What I remember is my bobber shot straight down about a foot like a rocket and just sat there. I waited about 2 seconds and then gave a hard snappy jerk with my right hand and to my surprise, the fish didn’t budge much. Then hand over hand, I kept pulling it in and I remember it felt like pulling up the anchor in the boat. It was very heavy, but I just kept pulling until it got stuck.
My dad says he was sitting at the table, reading his newspaper and heard me say something along the lines of “Dad, it’s stuck and won’t fit”. He said he didn’t think much of it at first, but after processing what I had said for a few seconds, a lightbulb finally went off, he threw the newspaper and ran over to me as fast as he could. As he peered over the hole, he could see this huge mouth covering the entire bottom of our 8” hole about 2 feet down at the bottom of the ice. I got it’s head in, but it’s belly was so fat it didn’t make it that far in before I got it wedged. I moved over a little to give him room. He got his hand down the hole, sliding his hand in between the side of the ice hole and side of the fish, working them down to the underside of it’s gills in the ideal spot to hold a walleye. After a brief struggle, he was able to hook his fingers in and pull the fish upwards and once he got a little momentum, he had it out and it was lying on the floor in front of us.
I don’t remember a whole lot from here, but it sounds like I was pretty excited. He was too. I had never seen a walleye this big and he hadn’t either. We each still get a kick out of the picture I took with the fish just outside his house. I’m all bundled up and just bear hugging the fish, like it’s a big stuffed animal with a huge grin. When we took it into Scenic Sports to get it weighed, it ended up going 11 1/4 pounds. For whatever reason, we mostly weighed fish at that time and didn’t care much about length, but I’m sure it was over 30” or around there.
From there, we brought it over to Zerr’s Taxidermy 2 blocks from our house to have it mounted. I always loved looking at it on our wall as a kid growing up. The truth is, I was probably hooked on fishing about a year or so prior, just from catching shiners and watching the bobber go down, but this fish sure cemented it. All throughout my childhood, I would fight my friends for the remote. They wanted to watch cartoons, but all I wanted to watch was fishing shows. It didn’t matter, walleye fishing, bass fishing down South, deep sea fishing, salmon fishing in Alaska, I loved all of it. I would often cry when my dad would go fishing with his friends and I couldn’t join them. I would tell my teachers when I grew up, I wanted to be a professional fisherman. As I got older into my teen years and college, it seemed like a pipedream and I pursued other interests. No matter how far away I’ve gotten from fishing in life, I just keep coming back. I still have to pinch myself, that nearly 40 years later from catching my first giant walleye, I get the privilege of working as a fishing guide!
Thanks Dad!
Marcus Lynch
Lucky Lynch’s Guide Service