A feature of life in Babel each year is the annual migration out onto the ice of Kempenfelt Bay. The movement is gradual. First one hardly soul tries the ice cautiously and if he does not go through and need the help of the Babel fire department’s airboat to be rescued, another foolhardy fisherman joins him. Soon the ice is crowded and small shelters are dragged out onto the ice to accommodate the less invincible of the ice fishermen. Within the first weeks of the lake freezing over, the daily population on the ice of the bay starts to rival that of a small town.
And people keep devising new ways to increase the crowds. In the past two years there has been a fishing derby that attracts thousands of people who want to stick a line through a hole in the ice to see what they can catch. Most just catch a cold but some get sufficient fish for their efforts to bring them back. From our angle the long lines of holes in the ice for the derby should have the words along them: ‘fold here.’ You would think that all those holes would weaken the ice.
Another worrisome trend we see is the increasing size of the ice huts. We saw four men wrestling with a very large structure on the shore the other day and the next thing it was out on the ice. It is the first two-storey ice hut. We checked and we found it had a playroom for the kids in the attic. That was sweet. They said the family that fishes together, freezes together.
Mind you, there is more than fishing going on out there. The parachutes pulling skiers and snowboarders along at breakneck speed are quite fascinating. The fast moving snowmobiles are less attractive, noisy and more of a menace. Others routinely defy death and go for a Sunday walk on the ice. They dare the ice-boaters, snow-mobilers and other sports enthusiasts to run into them at their peril. The fishermen just hunker over their hole in the ice and await a few more fish.
We keep waiting for the construction trailers next door in the water pollution centre to be pulled out onto the ice to be used as group homes for the fishermen. With flush toilets, and electric heat, some of those doublewides could accommodate up to 30 fishermen at a time. Mind you, we only make this suggestion in the hope that there is an early break up of the ice this year and the trailers disappear into the murky depths of Kempenfelt Bay.
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