Two weeks ago our good friend Andrew and his Suburban came to car camp, ski, and adventure with us for a few days. During a skiing recovery day, we decided to try ice fishing for the first time as a group.

Typically ice fishing involves a few things:

  1. A frozen body of water
  2. A manmade hole to fish from
  3. A properly set-up fishing pole
  4. Beers
  5. Cold people on the ice

It is unclear to me how big of a role the actual “fish” play in this activity, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun doing it, does it?

Ice fishing is a sport I have long wanted to try but never had a good opportunity until now. You might wonder, “Why would you want to sit on a frozen lake for hours at a time?”. That is a good question: the potential of catching dinner is certainly a big part of it. I stumbled across this article before we embarked on this journey. It left us with this wisdom gem: “One reason to ice fish, is that ice is a poor man’s boat”.

One reason to ice fish, is that ice is a poor man's boat.

The idea of ice fishing also feels a bit magical, as if you’re defying the laws of physics by walking on water. Yes, I am aware that frozen ice is very solid, but it still is mystifying. In short, I have no good explanation- but it sounded fun so, why not? That day we spontaneously reached out to icefishingcolorado.com for our ice fishing setup and accoutrements. Andrew met us on the ice and we were ready to go.

Andrew meets us on the ice

What We Had

Going with a rental kit provided us with some pretty stellar equipment. Mark, from icefishingcolorado.com, runs a small but professional operation. He showed us how to use the tools and threw in some nice freebies (mealworms, plenty of gas, etc.). It was clear that he has a lot of experience and enjoys helping newcomers get started.

We ended up with a full Eskimo kit. From my limited experience, they really do seem to be good quality items. I would venture to say most ice fishing setups we saw were at least partially Eskimo based.

Our lineup:

  • Gas-powered auger
  • Fishing Poles (2x)
  • Bait (Jigs and mealworms)
  • Tackle box with other standard equipment
  • Propane Heater
  • Pop-up tent
  • Seats
    • This is smart. I’m glad we had these.
  • Ladle
    • This fishes ice out of your hole, and turned out to be essential.
  • Crampons
    • We already had these which was great. Ice, as it turns out, is quite slippery.

Yeah, we skipped the beers. Next time. Perhaps our relative lack of success with catching fish was due to missing these?

Our ice palace!

Our kit

We went to Georgetown lake. We were initially very cautious while walking around. We had heard it was pretty frozen, but being on a new place frozen it’s always good to be a little bit cautious. As we started drilling into the ice, we kept drilling. Deeper, and deeper. We paused and checked our hole a couple of times to make sure we weren’t doing something wrong. Deeper, and deeper.

It ended up being roughly 18 inches where we drilled. It was nearly as deep as we could reasonably go with our massive gas powered auger. That is A LOT of ice. Based on this (I’m sure) scientific web page, we could probably drive our M1 Abrams on the lake and it would be fine, but alas we forgot them at home. As it so happens, the next day we saw the local police department doing a series of doughnuts on the ice, three cars at a time with a bunch queued up on the side of the ice. I wish I had captured that moment.

Cost

The cost of the rental equipment was $50 for the half-day. I think a full day is more like $70. It was definitely worth it as an introduction to ice fishing. I obviously haven’t tried a hand auger, but I can’t imagine it being feasible on much more than 6 inches of ice.

We also needed Colorado 1-day fishing licenses which cost $9 a piece. At the lake, a game officer was checking licenses and, while we were not approached, we were glad to be appropriately licensed.

Success?

Were we successful? At catching fish: no. At having fun: yes. Would I do it again? Yeah.

We're ice fishing!

The best part of the trip was being out on the ice. It was indeed chilly, however, it was also stunningly beautiful and quite peaceful.

Surprise

Once we setup our pop-up Eskimo tent around ourselves the fishing hole, we were surprised that the holes in the ice seem to glow. While the tent kept out most natural sky light, light was escaping from the hole. That light had entered the lake from outside our tent and was bouncing back to us producing a beautiful glowing effect.

Light reflecting from outside our tent throughout the ice

Blog updates

We’ve added comments to the blog so if you have thoughts or questions please reach out to us at the bottom of this post.

Also, we have made the pictures in posts interactive and with captions which will hopefully convey our stories a bit better.

We have some great posts coming including Dog Sledding, and Snowmobiling. We’ve skied 100,000+ vertical feet already and plenty more to come!