ICE-FISHING A CHILLING CATCH.

Byline: Tom Stienstra San Francisco Examiner

Somewhere in the back of the mind of every ice fisherman is the nightmare vision of the ice breaking, and kerplunk, there you go.

Out on the ice, you see all these long cracks in the surface, like fault lines, and even with subtle temperature changes, you can hear the ice cracking as it shrinks and expands. You cringe at every noise.

I'd never tried ice-fishing, but when my pal John Korb told me about 5-pound rainbow trout at Eagle Lake in Lassen County that were as easy to catch as guppies in an aquarium, we were off and running for the last day of the season before the New Year's Day closure, making the long drive with visions of giant trout dancing before us.

We walked out on the ice at the mouth of Pine Creek, drilled our holes in the ice with an auger, then chipped out the edges with a hatchet. The ice was 5 inches thick, plenty thick for safety, but it still creaked, and everybody still cringed. But hey, it must be the real deal, I thought, because 52 people were out there in a span of 75 yards.

It was 18 degrees at daybreak, a real heat wave for Eagle Lake, and we tied on little crappie jigs, let them down to the bottom, just 7 feet deep, then began twitching them. Then the fish started biting.

At one point, there were five on at once within 50 feet of us, all over 5 pounds. A young gent named Rick Courther Jr. had the biggest. He fought it for 20 minutes, his little rod bending into the little hole in the ice, the fish charging about so wildly that it partially tangled five other lines. But they were freed without a problem, and the big rainbow was eventually persuaded to the little hole in the ice - 23 inches long, 6-1/2 pounds, with a huge, broad tail and bright black spots. Turns out Rick's dad, Rick Sr., ended up with one even bigger, just under 7 pounds.

There's no place else in the West where the average trout are so big, strong and beautiful. I caught one that had bright red meat, one of the sweetest-tasting fish imaginable.

But those creaking noises . . . they can have you holding your breath, freezing in place, waiting for the ice to break up, then kerplunk. Everybody thinks about it. You can see it in how they walk on the ice, moving gingerly, as if that will make them lighter.

When Korb was fighting a big trout and several other anglers gathered around to watch and the ice discharged this ominous 5-second creak, everybody froze as if it were an earthquake.

``I know you want to see my fish,'' Korb said with a grin, ``but could you please do it at a distance?'' He later said he had visions of 20 guys, all standing in one spot around him become too heavy for the ice, making like the Titanic.

Safe? Yeah, it's safe after about a month's worth of subzero-degree nights freezes the entire lake here, 100 miles of shoreline and 27,000 surface acres, quite a sight. In the main body of the lake, the ice can shudder and produce a roar that sounds like a jet is taking off, eerie and foreboding.

Ice-fishing in California isn't the science that it is in the Northern states, like Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, where they actually use fish decoys and heated tents and have fights over the best spots to drill holes. But at the same time, at Eagle Lake, swimming right under your little holes in the ice, are some of the biggest rainbow trout in the West, so big that it could make a guy move here from Duluth.

But then again, if it was me, I'd move out of Duluth anyway.

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Photo

PHOTO Tyler Korb of McCloud poses with a 3-pound rainbow trout caught on Eagle Lake while ice-fishing.

Barbara Korb / Special to the Daily News