Feb 11, 2022 4 min read

This week I have been thinking about all that ice outside. The ice of course leads me to think about ice fishing.

I used to love to go up to Lake Erie and just ride through Presque Isle State Park during the winter. The snow really piles up there. You cannot believe how much snow this area gets and the little towns like Edinboro get buried.

If one drives out Presque Isle Bay, it is very interesting to see the ice fisherman who truly love the sport. Last time I was up there, there were even cars out on the ice. The holes are drilled right down to the water and the bait is dropped in from specialized shortened poles. People erect tents and put-up heaters and light fires right on the ice. Now I am not certain that this is wise behavior, but I have stopped many times and talked to some of these dedicated fishermen, and they claim to know when the ice can hold all this entertainment. If this isn’t entertaining enough for you, go a ways out to the right side of the park and there it is, Horseshoe Pond.

On Horseshoe Pond, there are houseboats. These houseboats have been there a long time. In 1890, the first houseboat appeared in Erie. Some Russian settlers began building houseboats here to afford a house. Soon there were a whole lot of houseboats popping up along the bay. Most were moored along Presque Isle shoreline. At the time, there was no regulations, and these houses were cheaply built. Soon this would become a problem as most of them were in bad shape and had no rules as to construction. That’s when they moved the houseboats all to Misery Bay.

This is very unusual as this is a State Park, where usually people do not live. In 1950, the Coast Guard dug a channel from Misery Bay to Horseshoe Pond. There were around 30 houseboats then. These owners loved to drink and fish as they lived on the boat’s year round.

Today the spaces on the pond are leased for 10 years. There is a 24-houseboat limit here. Interestingly, there is a buried electrical line on the bottom of the pond, so the houses do have electricity. I always wondered about the ice in the pond, but I guess it must not get too bad because there is always someone out there. I hear they have bathrooms that incinerate all the waste produced. I love to drive out to see these houseboats in the winter and wonder about them. I picture the people who love winter fishing out there near the North Pier Lighthouse in their cozy houseboat having a beer and waiting for a bite. Did you ever wonder about those houseboats yourself?

The other entertaining thing about weather involves tracking in snow. If you want to know who lives around your house, go outside and walk around in the next snow. You can see some interesting tracks. Common tracks such as rabbit, in which you see four feet in a rectangle pattern, and dog, which zig and zag picking up scent as they cover ground in the snow, are observed. But more interesting are the coyote tracks, which are usually in a nice straight line. Bobcats, who retract their claws in the snow and have those big deep cat tracks minus those claws but with big deep heel pads. You can see squirrels that show all five toes in the hind feet usually bounding and widely spaced and raccoons with their hand-like tracks. Animals with tails such as opossums clearly do come out in winter and leave a clear line in the snow from dragging their tails.

True story one time I was tracking a deer and tracked back onto my own tracks. The deer I was tracking had been tracking me. Are you bored enough yet to go out there in the snow to see if you might find some interesting tracks? Maybe go out for a nice day trip to the heavy snow of Erie? I think I might just curl up here by the gun room window with my nice blanket and wait for spring.