A Look Back

It’s January on the Northern Plains. That means, barring questionable ice conditions or access issues because of drifted-in snow, people are ice fishing.

No matter the year – be it 1963 when this photograph was taken at Balta Dam in Pierce County or 2017 – that’s typically the case in North Dakota in January.

Not surprisingly, things are different today than they were more than a half-century ago.

In 1963, for instance, a fishing guide published in North Dakota OUTDOORS featured only 100 fishing waters. (Note: 15 or so of those descriptions of fishing waters were bays, arms and creeks of what was then called Lake Garrison.)

Today, the number of fishing lakes in North Dakota is 425-plus. About 200 of those waters hold northern pike, which, back in the day, was the fish of choice for ice anglers.

“The northern pike is still the most sought after fish … northern pike are growing in North Dakota as each of the recent years has seen a new record set,” reported from the May 1963 issue of North Dakota OUTDOORS.

In 1963, a 30-pound, 8-ounce pike taken through the ice at Lake Garrison on January 24 by Herman Muhlbradt of Raub became the new state record.

“Muhlbradt’s trophy exceeded by exactly one pound the lunker caught by Joe Zahn of Valley City from Lake Ashtabula, which set the previous North Dakota record back in the early summer of 1960,” according to the February 1963 issue of North Dakota OUTDOORS. “The Raub man caught his big fish from the house of his neighbor Rudy Folden.”

What’s interesting about that last sentence is the reference to the ice house. It wasn’t until the 1950s that fishing out of an ice house in North Dakota became legal.

“In just six years the use of fish houses here has increased ten times,” according to North Dakota OUTDOORS in 1959. “That’s mighty rapid growth. And it reflects the growth of winter fishing in general.”

While anglers have hacked, chiseled or drilled holes into North Dakota lakes in winter for many years, it’s been said that ice fishing in the state really took off, say, in 1979 through 1984 due, in part, to a boom of big yellow perch at Devils Lake.

That interest in riding out a day atop a 5-gallon bucket or from inside a comfortable ice house certainly hasn’t slowed over time.

Today, with reliable gear and ice augers that start way more often than not, and a record number of lakes to fish across North Dakota, interest in ice fishing is certainly at a high.