“It’s been just an hour since we left camp,” remarked Jack at length, “and there you can catch a glimpse of the lake through the trees yonder.”
Abe Turner was surprised as well as pleased to find two of the boys at his door that morning.
“Didn’t expect us back so soon, did you, Abe?” laughed Tom. “But in laying out the plans for to-day we found that some of the boys were fish hungry, so we decided to run down and take you up on your proposition.”
“Nothing would please me better,” Abe told them. “And it is about as good a day for ice fishing as anybody’d want to set eyes on. I’ll go right away and get my lines. Then we’ll pick up a pail, and put some of my minnows in it.”
Before long they were out upon the ice of Lake Tokala, Tom carrying an axe, Jack the various lines and “tip-ups” that were to signal when a fish had been hooked, and Abe with the live bait in a tin bucket.
The day was not a bitterly cold one, and this promised to make fishing agreeable work.
“On the big lakes where they do a heap of this kind of work,” explained their guide as they went toward Cedar Island, “the men build little shanties out on the ice, where they can keep fairly warm. 123 You see sometimes the weather is terribly cold. But a day like this makes it a pleasure to be out.”
Coming to a place where Abe knew from previous experience that a good haul could be made, the first hole was cut in the ice. As winter was still young this did not prove to be a hard task.
Abe had marked a dozen places where these holes were to be chopped, but the boys chose to watch him set his first line. After the novelty had worn off they would be ready to take a hand themselves.
There are many sorts of “tip-ups” used in this species of sport, but Abe’s kind answered all purposes and was very simple, being possibly the original “tip-up.”