Ice fishing in Texas

Usually, ice fishing is taken up by skilled fishermen, those who have already mastered fishing during summer period. Many have noticed how people move from one place to another place on frozen water reservoirs. They identify a place and sit for hours together motionless. Ice fishing fascinates and attracts. It is some kind of a narcotic. Many can express that it is awfully uninteresting to sit motionless in winters on a frozen reservoir and wait for much-awaited catch. But not Dan, for him it is the first step to the studio, and it gives him the most creative work of the year.

He was on his Texas ranch in Marfa, at one of the tanks used for watering his 237 head of cattle. The tank was totally frozen over. He cut his hole in the ice, set up his chair and electric coffee maker, baited his hook, and commenced to sit and think. An hour passed and the first of many melodies started to pass through his mind.

Then it happened.

His fishing rod was slowly bending and Dan was thinking, “Awesome, this should be a big walleye.” He slowly picked up the rod, which thankfully had 6-pound test line on it, and set the hook.

The fish made several lunges toward the bottom. He finally got it to the hole and saw the white belly. He was thinking state record, until the next time it swam by the hole and saw the whiskers. It was a huge catfish, perhaps 16 to 20 pounds. He slowly worked the line in and the great moment to bring the fish topside came. But there was a problem, a tiny problem.

There's a saying that if you don't think big, you won't get big. And in this case, it was the hole that Dan had cut, the usual 10 inch in diameter. It was like a bad cartoon, every time Dan pulled on the line, the catfish's head compressed against the ice, giving this mocking, shocked look on its face, then plunging back down. "This can't be happening" Dan said over and over, but it was happening. After 4 attempts of pulling the great cat up to the surface, the ultimate happened. Dan's line broke and he pulled up only a memory. He sat back down, put the pole down, and for the next 2 and a half hours, he pondered the pain man must suffer in life.