Minnesota’s ice-fishing extravaganza

It’s 20 below zero with wind chill, but a group of guys sporting yellow foam cowboy hats doesn’t seem to mind.  Nor do the 7,000 other anglers and 2,000 on-lookers among 21,000 holes drilled into Brainerd, Minnesota’s, Gull Lake.

The handful of cowboys has driven 1,000 miles from Wyoming to Minnesota for past seven years to compete in the world’s largest ice-fishing contest.

Winning a snowmobile the second year didn’t hurt, but they insist it’s the warm, playful spirit of those willingly sitting around in brutal temps that keeps them coming back.

“We come for the good-looking girls,” jokes Rich Hepner of Casper, Wyo., knowing full well you can’t tell a bust from a beer gut.  Everyone shuffles around androgynously, thickly bundled head-to-toe. Only eyes or sunglasses peek from the layers.

The idea for the Brainerd Jaycees Ice Fishing Extravaganza was first scrawled on the inside of a beer case 20 years ago.  It has brought in $1.5 million for charities since then.

Participants in the Jan. 23 contest win big, too, with more than $150,000 in prizes, many of which don’t require the biggest catch.  Someone goes home with a new truck. Others earn ATVs, snowmobiles, ice-fishing gear, tents and more.

In many ways, the ice-fishing contest is the winter equivalent of Minnesota’s famed State Fair: big crowds, funny attire, full-blown spectacle.

Anglers show up toting poles, sleds and gear as they trudge down an American flag-draped avenue of ice leading to Hole-in-the-Day Bay.  One group gleefully flies signs identifying themselves as “Happy Hookers.”  A local man, dressed in a mountain man’s fur hat, fishes from the comfort of a cushy La-Z-Boy he hauls from home.

Steinarr Elmerson, a rowdy character who runs the Nordic Inn Medieval Bed and Brew, hawks fur Viking hats with horns. Known by most as The Crazy Viking, he often pops up among Minnesota football fans in full historic attire.

To an outsider, “crazy” could apply to all the participants. Where else do people schlep portable heaters so they don’t have to drink beer slushies?

Like the state fair, though, there’s this infectious we’re-in-this-together spirit.  It’s a chance to collectively laugh at Mother Nature’s frigid efforts–something worth numb toes, icy eyelashes and grins that freeze to your face.

–Photo and text by Lisa Meyers McClintick, Red Editorial Staff