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Amid snowdrifts and sub-freezing temperatures, I couldn’t resist pausing to gaze out on Lake Superior at the village of fish-houses scattered from the North Shore shoreline out about a mile onto the lake itself.
A fellow who had folded up his portable fishing house and was making his way to shore was near enough to engage in conversation. He grew up in Proctor and now lives in Barnum, but the chance to drop a line through a hole on the frozen surface of Lake Superior brought him out.
Hockey and basketball are rocketing along to their seasons’ conclusions, and Major League baseball is ready to start a chilly and possibly snow-covered season, but any way you cut it, this has been a bizarre winter for those with sporting blood.
That includes fishermen.
“Did you have any luck?” I asked him. “Yeah,” he smiled. “I was set up way out there and I caught seven lake trout. Then when I came in closer to shore, nobody seemed to be catching anything, but I tried my luck and a school of herring appeared, and I caught 10 of them.”
   Seven lake trout and 10 herring. That’s not a bad haul for someone who could put tasty fresh fish on the table for about a month. It’s fun, and exciting, to go for a stroll out on the frozen surface of Lake Superior. Great spot for a hike, and we went out probably three blocks or so without any concern that the surface wouldn’t hold up. They told us 95 percent of the big lake’s surface had frozen over, which is distinct rarity, and that the ice was two or three feet thick. It also had just enough snow cover to provide traction, rather than being ice-rink slippery.
A week or so later, I was lured back to the same spot by a sight that offered a wonderful, delectable contradiction for the senses. The same hundred or so ice houses were in place out on the lake, but in the background, seemingly much too close, there came our trusty Coast Guard cutter breaking ice as it steamed along, chopping a channel for the start of the shipping season, which came last Saturday with the departure of a couple ships.
It has to be exciting to walk out on Lake Superior, where you almost never can walk, and setting up an ice fishing house, or just cutting a hole in the ice, makes it even more exciting. But the presence of an ice-breaker in the not-too-distant distance would be a clear indication to me that the Lake Superior ice-fishing season might be over.
Rare as this winter has been for ice covering Lake Superior, it’s breaking up and disappearing at just about the right rate that it should be gone about the time dedicated fishermen can go back to casting from shore or trolling from boats.

Madness of March

Not too long ago, we used to refer to the Minnesota State high school hockey tournament as “March Madness.” We also included the college hockey playoffs under the same heading. And then, one year, we learned that the NCAA had patented the term “March Madness” for its annual major college basketball tournament, so it became illegal(?) to use the phrase for anything else.
    That led to an absurd collection of terms, such as Frozen Four for the NCAA hockey tournament, and all sorts of other pseudo-names for groups of playoff survivors that got down to the final foursome. Ridiculous as it seems, the NCAA was able to standardize common words and prevent anyone else from using them.
I suggested hockey should patent the term “Championship Saturday,” which would prevent any other sports entity from using the term, let along playing their championships on Saturday. Perhaps, in fact, a sports organization could patent all seven days of the week, thus preventing any other sports operation from playing on any day of the week.
At any rate, we are not here to ridicule the NCAA basketball tournament. It has become huge, and it’s fun to watch the teams pare themselves down to the Sweet 16, the Elite Eight, and the Final Four, before the semifinals and finals declare the national champion.
Me? I picked Louisville to beat Michigan State for the title. That was before I learned the President Obama had picked the same two teams in the final with the same result.
It’s convenient that after such a frenzied start, with such colossal upsets, we got most of this week off before the tournament resumes this Thursday and Friday.
In case you’ve been living in a cave, the South and West regions play semifinals on Thursday, with the East and Midwest on Friday. In the South, Florida plays UCLA and Stanford plays Dayton; I like Florida and Stanford, with Florida winning that South final in Memphis to advance to the Final Four.
In the West, at Anaheim, I like Baylor over Wisconsin, and Arizona over San Diego State, with Arizona gaining that Final Four slot.
Then on Friday, in the East Regional at New York City, give me Michigan State over Virginia, and Iowa State over Connecticut, with Michigan State taking the nation’s best college fight song on to the Final Four. The Midwest Regional at Indianapolis is the toughest of all, and I’ll take Michigan over Tennessee and Louisville over Kentucky in a classic neighborhood struggle, with Louisville having enough left to also take out the Wolverines.
That will leave Louisville, Michigan State, Florida and Arizona as the Final Four finalists. Enjoy.