In addition to the state free park weekend, it is also Wisconsin’s free fishing weekend so that those without a fishing license can try to hook a fish. There is also a free fishing weekend in January but the ideal of walking on ice, cutting a hole in the ice and trying to stay warm to catch a fish just isn’t appealing to me as going in the summer time when you just have deer flies, mosquitoes and some other summer things to deal with.
Trying to Catch One
The lakes and rivers have extra activity today as people on the other end of hooks and line are hoping to catch a big fish on the opening day of the fishing season.
Trying to Catch a Fish
Some water was running from the melting snow today as the temperatures reached fifty degrees but not warm enough for me to fishing from shore, especially when the lakes and most rivers are still frozen.
Fishing on a Warm Day
“Farming wasn’t going too well for three families…we could hold up a mirror and watch ourselves starve to death.” A statement from Florence Hokenson on why her husband and his two brothers started fishing for a living in the late 1920’s when at first the fishing only supplemented their diet but after several unsuccessful years of dairy farming they purchased pond nets and eventually pursued fishing full-time which they did for more than thirty years on Lake Superior.
The Herring Shed was a busy place during herring season where the wives, children, and hired hands awaited the arrival of the Hokenson brothers boat called the Twilite, loaded with fish in gill nets. The fish were untangled from the net, rinsed in the wooden tank, gutted and beheaded, rinsed again in the other tank, drip-dried on the rack, salted, and stacked in a barrel.
The Herring Shed
While not as colorful as the autumn leaves, these fishing net floats have some color even if the old wooden ones are pale and worn. But then the autumn leaves are brand new with less than six months of service when they become colorful and not years of service like these fishing net floats.
Box of Fishing Net Floats
