In a frozen bend of my home flow, as we so often do this time of year, my buddy and my brother and I met for a morning of ice fishing over the weekend. At this point in the hardwater season, the location is never as fast as the early ice bite — which they both often provide me pictures or tales of 50-fish mornings before they head off to work and shuttle their kids to school and daycare — but it’s always good to be there. Watching the fish drift through with the slight winter flow of the water encased under a couple feet of ice, and getting a few to bite, be it a nice walleye or a healthy pike; and listening to the late winter world wake up with the call of a chickadee or the chatter of a nuthatch as the sun crests the eastern edge of the valley and filters through the bare brush on shore makes for a good way to put a cap on my hardwater season.

With reports pouring in on their phones of perch and crappies coming elsewhere, but with way more driving required than the five minutes from the door of the house I grew up in, the spot provides just enough action, and certainly the convenience I’ve come to enjoy in my outdoors efforts. The latter certainly hasn’t changed much, and has perhaps spoiled me, as no matter where I have lived over the last few decades, I’ve been able to find favorite fishing spots just a few minutes from my driveway for smallmouth bass, crappies, walleyes, trout and just about any species I’d want to pursue. Some of those waters have been managed intensely, others just seem to exist on their own, providing a tug at the end of the line in the right place at the right time, or as the seasons roll along and one portion of the angling calendar turns into the next.

In that spirit, the bend and this annual visit home represents a turning point in my season; reinforced this year by the upcoming week’s weather forecast of highs in the forties, and maybe even a preview of spring next weekend with temperatures in the 50s. Ice will begin to give way on small ponds and flowing waters, panfish will rush the warming shallows, and before we know it, April will be here and then May, with all the opportunities the heart of spring brings for angling. Like the surface of the small river, this weekend served as a point in time held in memory, a pause at the end of one season on the precipice of the next, as a rising sun melts the surface and the warm meltwater entering the system works its magic on those first open edges of ice.

It’s hard not to get excited as the head shakes and hard pulls of a five pound pike seal the morning’s moments for me, and the smell of the fish’s slime remaining on my fingers as it slides back into the ice hole and down into the depths suggest more of nature’s spring cologne will be at hand as the hardwater gives way to an open stream or a backchannel spawning area where the same fish will likely stack up with the runoff of the upcoming season’s first rain. The cleansing flow will pull winter’s dirt and debris downstream and bring the initial run of prespawners up to a point where they can go no further, and there beget the next generation of fish. All the while providing a chance to feel the same rush, enjoy the fury of the fight and the calm of the world leading up to it, and another bend in the season, which suddenly doesn’t seem so far away … in our outdoors.