NEAR GRAND RAPIDS, Minn. _ Paul Nelson stopped in the snowy woods and looked around.
"This is where we usually get lost," he said.
Nelson and his partner, Liv Mostad-Jensen, both of Grand Rapids, were looking for a lake where they could do some northern pike spearing. They'd been there once before, on this same route. But there was no trail, and on that first trip the two had to do a bit of _ well, exploring _ before finding the lake.
"Last year was the first time we tried to get in here," said Nelson, 37. "We didn't get there until 2 p.m. It was, 'Do we fish or just go back?' We fished, and the fishing was phenomenal."
On this crisp January morning, he picked a likely looking opening in the woods, and soon the three of us had found the spearing grounds.
Most spearers have their shacks set up permanently and just drive across the ice to them. Nelson and Mostad-Jensen prefer finding lakes well off the beaten path and bushwhacking into them. They haul all their gear _ pop-up shelter, ice auger, decoys, heater _ on narrow sleds that Nelson built. For these two, getting there is part of the adventure.
Nelson, who has been spearing since his youth, found this lake the way he finds most of his spearing lakes. He researches the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources website and Google Earth. Then he and Mostad-Jensen, 35, try to figure out how to get there.
