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Trout Bums at Large is a monthly column appearing in the Yakima Herald-Republic and the Seattle Times. The column is written by Randal Sumner and Mark Littleton. We will be keeping an archive of these articles on this page.

Ice Fishing
by Randal Sumner
08/01/2004

In 1960 my Dad was assigned to Goose Bay AFB in Labrador, the Air Force had a radar ranch installation that was part of the NORAD system.
NORAD’s job was to keep tabs on any incoming Russian ICBM’s entering North American airspace. In a very real way places like Goose Bay would have the first information on any impending nuclear exchange.
When they say it’s not just a job, there not kidding.
I was nine years old when we moved up north and I remember Goose Bay as being a wondrous place, it never got dark in the summer, and we played in the forest around our house like wild boys. I got my first paying job working for the Hudson Bay Co. Trading Post in the Eskimo village of Happy Valley, passing out fliers on the base.
In a place like Goose Bay a person learns to manufacture fun: that was especially true for the adults. One Christmas my parents decided to enter the base Christmas decorating contest with our neighbors. They requisitioned a couple of pieces of plywood and set to making a huge painted Santa figure. I thought it was great and just because Santa looked remarkably like Porky the Pig was no reason they wouldn’t win.
After Christmas plywood Porky disappeared, at least for a while, Dad would haul it off someplace and dump it, then later on, some do-gooder would bring it back, this kept happening the entire time we were living there. It finally wound up nailed to an ice-fishing shack. Which brings me around to something remotely concerning a fishing column.
The winters in Labrador are fierce. We had temps of 50 below zero and it was dark most of the day. But when the bay would freeze up the G.I.’s would push the icehouses out and set up camp. You know those pictures you see of ice fishing in the Midwest, little shacks or less with guys fishing through ten-inch holes in the ice? Well forget that. This was ice fishing GI/Vegas style. These were well-insulated buildings with heat and lights and a stove for frying up the catch.
When Dad would take us out to the ice it was big stuff for my brother Gary and me. I can remember entering the shack the first time and seeing a bunch of grown men smoking cigars and drinking beer, howling with laughter catching smelt; betting on who would get the next one. We loved these guys and they treated us like a million bucks, I suppose because we were just kids and they were along way from there families.
Sometimes when I hear people are stressed out or bored and the kids have too much time on their hands and the weather is lousy I think about those GI families out there whipping up a little fun. It’s Thanksgiving and I for one am thankful for all the places I’ve lived and for the tough resilient people who raised

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