By Lee Bloomquist
SIX YEAR-OLD BEN LORENZ FIGURED HE HAD HOOKED A BIG ONE. Well, it felt like it was really heavy,” Lorenz said about the 24-inch northern he pulled through the ice while fishing with family near Moccasin Point on Lake Vermilion. “Like I was trying to pull it up, and it was fighting hard.” After catching some nice fish during summer, it was Ben’s first fish of the 2020-2021 ice fishing season. “I thought this thing was going to be big, but it was a little one,” Lorenz said. “It might have been my biggest northern ice fishing.” Ice fishing in northeastern Minnesota is a life sport. And a memory-maker.
30 N O RT H E R N A DV E N T U R E S W I N T E R 2021
Ice fishing as a youth with family, or on a frozen northern Minnesota lake as an adult with children, grandchildren, or buddies, is all about family and friends. “I remember as a five-, six- or seven year-old going with my dad, brother, grandpa, and cousins,” Brian Kemp, 38, of rural Mountain Iron said. “We would do Pleasant Lake and a lot of lakes around Gilbert. That’s what hooked me.” Ice fishing with family and friends sticks in anglers’ minds forever. It also offers a nearly unparalleled opportunity to “get away from it all.” Solitude. Sunrises. Sunsets. And smiles.
