MINNEAPOLIS _ Last Wednesday was the 111th consecutive, and final, day of ice fishing this season for Gregg Hennum, co-owner of Sportsman's Lodge on Lake of the Woods.
After the weather warms up, the deep snow piled atop the northern border lake turns into a slushy mess, Hennum said, making travel all but impossible and perhaps dangerous.
"Too much snow, too much slush and the snowbanks are too high," he said. "We're done for the year."
Farther south, hard by the shores of Mille Lacs, Terry Thurmer has similarly parked for the season the weary Ford and Chevy trucks whose transmissions have been fried and whose plows have been bent and busted this winter clearing roads for anglers wanting to fish Curley's, Sherman's, Banana and Rock Pile flats.
"Deep snow was the big problem," said Terry's wife, Vicky. "We probably broke our plows 20 times. Motors went out. Fuel pumps went out. It was tough."
Across Minnesota, largely out of the public eye, the winter angling industry _ an integral and growing segment of the state's overall $4.5 billion fishing economy _ is quietly going out of business for another year.
Bait dealers. Ice-fishing contest organizers. Wheelhouse retailers. Fishshanty-rental outfits. Each is closing the books on a seasonal sport whose grip on a seemingly ever-increasing number of Minnesotans _ and their pocketbooks _ appears lock-tight.
Mille Lacs is an example.
Anglers there, some outfitted with high-tech electric augers and underwater cameras, among many other modern ice-fishing gizmos, could keep only a single walleye this winter between 21 and 23 inches.
Yet because that dimension is relatively rare among walleyes in the lake, Mille Lacs anglers' chances of leaving the lake with even a single fillet to fry were minimal.
So why were some 3,500 fish houses on the lake at one time this winter? So many houses that on some mornings veritable fleets of angler-driven pickups streamed by the Department of Natural Resources' shore-stationed creel clerks rather than wait in long lines to be asked how many fish they did or didn't hook.
"One Sunday, one of our clerks counted 115 vehicles that passed by her in 50 minutes," said Eric Jensen, the DNR's Mille Lacs large lake specialist, noting anglers are not legally obligated to report to the clerks.
