Brute’s Bleat by Harold Brutlag- December 26, 2018

first time out with him this season. He showed up at the appointed hour, 9:30 a.m., with a new electric auger which brought a smile to my face. We decided we’d take a hike to the north end and see if we could find some sunfish. We put on our ice creepers because there is little snow left after the December thaw we’ve been enjoying. We didn’t find a lot of sunfish and those few we caught were too small. We fished from 9 ft. to 15 feet and drilled a lot of holes with his new auger and it’s 40 amp battery which worked like a gem. The manual says it will drill 60 eight in. holes in 20 inches ice on one charge. We didn’t put his Striker Trophy to the test, but the ice was more like 8 to 10 inches and drilling holes was like cutting butter with a hot knife. The crappies were suspended in about 11 feet of water, many of them small, but I caught one I put in the bucket before we left and headed south. We ended up fishing south of the access and found lots of sunfish, but most of them were too small. Another angler was having the same problem and we did lots of hole hopping and kept eight before we left at about 3 p.m. A bonus to the trip was watching a rooster pheasant fly out of the cattails at the access. And yes, it was within shooting range! Maybe I should be taking my shotgun along until the season is over Jan. 1. In my jaunts around Wright County I’m seeing a lot more turkeys than pheasants and quite a number of deer toward evening. One good thing about the warm December is that it gave the farmers great opportunity to finish up harvesting the crops and that made more food readily available for wildlife. * * * Some of my memories of winter vacation from high school in the late 40’s included skiing, skating, sledding, and sliding hill across from school building in Henning. The sliding hill and adjoining skating rink were popular gathering places for school kids and the city provided a warming house to make it even better, especially on weekends. We fashioned toboggans out of cardboard boxes and used them on the snowy hill for impromptu races. In my freshman year the Lions Club (I think it was that organization) put on races and awarded prizes to the winners. A girl and I were the finalist out of the sliding group that time. We were careful to bend up the front and the edges of the cardboard so our hand grips wouldn’t interfere with the speed by dragging in the snow. This wasn’t a timed event, but we both charged to the starting line, flopped down on the cardboard and the first person to reach the bottom was the winner. This wasn’t a school event, but there were a fair amount of school kids pulling for me or the opposition, a very athletic gal a year older, I think. It was a fair race, but I lost and it was a humbling experience to get beat by a girl. I don’t remember what the prize was for winning, but the girls last name was Helmbrecht and I might have congratulated her, but I know my heart wasn’t in it. Talk about a sore looser! The warming house had kind of a pecking order about it which probably would be referred to as bullying nowadays. It got kind of blue at times when the older fellows would light up a Lucky Strike or Camel when the monitor wasn’t around. Our skates were the clamp on variety and as I remember it was tough to keep them on. I envied those with shoe skates. One of my classmates, a Norwegian named Harlan Syverson had a pair and was an excellent basketball player He would skate each afternoon before a home basketball game until his coach found out and was worried he’s twist an ankle. It was all part of growing up at that time and a stepping stone to other winter activities, like skiing behind a pickup off Hwy. 108 which had a wide right-of-way. By then we had driver’s licenses so we were 16-17 years old. At that time licenses were available at the bank for a small fee, $3.00 if I remember correctly and no required drivers training. The skis we wore had a single strap around our boots and the trick was to flip the tow rope over the signs and remain upright crossing the driveways and mail boxes. It took some doing, but four of us got fairly good at it and were enjoying ourselves when the weather cooperated. The tow rope was a trip rope from my dad’s dairy barn and was used to trip the slings of hay in the haymow during the summer harvest. The inevitable happened one Sunday when the skier didn’t quite clear a sign and snapped the rope. My dad had a frown on his face and chewed me out, but I still think he liked the ingenuity we were displaying. That sport lasted until a member of the Minnesota State Highway Patrol stopped us and said we were creating a hazard to other drivers. We didn’t get a ticket thankfully or we would have had to take up a collection to pay the fine! We tried skiing on some of the lakes, but the icy areas caused spills and we decided to quit rather than break a leg or get a concussion. There weren’t any helmets back then. An area called the Folden Hills, because they were in the township of Folden, was inhabited mostly by Scandinavians. Their love for skiing came with them when they immigrated. They made their own skis and created several ski jumps on land in the Folden Hills. We never got to try the jumps because of our meager equipment and lack of skills. As little kids my Dad would take us to Dalton on a Sunday afternoon where a ski jump attracted amateurs as well as professionals. Most of our skiing was limited to hills in the immediate area and while skiing down was great the walk back up the hills took a lot of energy! There was winter fishing too, besides dark house spearing, and my dad would take us to Silver Lake, near Battle Lake, for crappies. We used round sticks with a spike in the end to keep them upright and a bobber. When the bobber goes down, grab the pole and start running were our instructions. It worked even though the holes were chiseled and kind of jagged. . . Visiting with Chuck Stoppleman after a recent VFW meeting, he said his dad gave him the same instructions when they fished winter crappies. “The fish would pop right out of the hole,” he commented. * * * And with that we wish all our readers great fishing the balance of the winter and a Happy New Year!