It's been a while since I've felt like writing. Spring has been taking it's sweet coming to Garden Hill. This is the first weekend that I would call warm and there is no longer any snow on the ground. But I wouldn't go so far as to say it's nice out yet. The ground is very muddy, so muddy in fact that the buses were not running for THREE WEEKS in April and the beginning of May because of road conditions. We just had our first full week back and it's clear that the both staff and students are ready for the summer break.
All the mud and lack of school has made for poor picture conditions so I don't really have much to post lately. However, back in March a few Elders from the community took the grade sevens ice fishing. I went with my class to find out how it's done and to take some pictures which I neglected to post. Here are the results of that day:
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| First you need to re-break the surface of the ice. |
The class was invited out to bring the lines in for the last time this season. The ice fishing and trapping season ends in March, likely because you can't guarantee cold enough weather beyond March. At the time the ice on the lake was around 14" thick.
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| This man introduced himself as Soc. He's pulling out the rock that weights the line down. |
The net is set up under the water by cutting a whole into the ice using an auger or chainsaw and then running a
jigger under the ice. A jigger is a floating board with a metal lever that can be pulled using a rope held by the operator. When the rope is pulled the metal tip of the lever digs into the ice and propels the jigger forward, pulling the line along with it. You can hear a tapping as the jigger moves along so it's easy to know where it is. Once the length of the net is reached, another hole is cut and the jigger and trailing rope is retrieved. This rope is used to then pull the net under the ice between the two holes.
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| Pulling the nets out. |
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| Fingers crossed for fish! |
The nets are left over night and then pulled up the next day. Unfortunately the wrong kind of net was set up so we told it was unlikely we would catch anything...
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| A jack fish! |
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| Norman holding our prize. |
We caught a single jack fish which the elders kept. It was kind of a let down when we found out our lunch was hot dogs and not fried jack fish. But the kids didn't seem to mind too much.
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| Oh winter, how I do not miss you. |
