A beautiful day to spend on the ice
<p>JEROME A. POLLOS/Press Wade Palaniuk braves the blowing snow Wednesday while ice fishing on Fernan Lake.</p>
<p>JEROME A. POLLOS/Press Using a chainsaw instead of an auger, Palaniuk removes an block of ice from the 8-inch thick frozen surface of Fernan Lake to ice fish.</p>
<p>JEROME A. POLLOS/Press Wade Palaniuk pulls his fishing line out of an access hole in Fernan Lake to remove a perch from one of his four hooks in the water.</p>
<p>JEROME A. POLLOS/Press The morning's catch of perch lie in the snow providing a convenient cold storage solution for Palaniuk.</p>
FERNAN LAKE - When the snow floated down in North Idaho on Wednesday, and it kept on coming, some grabbed their snow shovels.
Others cranked up their snowblowers.
Most drove slowly to work.
Not Wade Palaniuk.
He went fishing.
"I love the outdoors," he said as he stood and kept tabs on four poles holding lines in Fernan Lake. "I spend as much time as I can out here."
Even when it's 20 degrees.
Even when the snow is falling in flurries.
Even when the wind is blowing so hard he feels it right to his bones, right through his Carhartt jacket, gloves and Nike stocking cap.
And yes, even when the fish aren't biting.
But Wednesday, they were.
Palaniuk pulled up five perch in a 15-minute stretch. Each was about five to six inches, and after he carefully removed the hook, he tossed each fish onto the snow and ice covering the popular lake.
"I don't know if they're any bigger in here or not," he said.
The Coeur d'Alene man knows fishing. He was raised casting lines for trout in his hometown of Paradise, Mont. His son, Brandon, is one of the country's top bass fishermen and is back east for a tournament. Dad declines to take credit for his son's success.
"I wish I could say that," he said, laughing. "He's pretty much a self-taught kid."
On this day, Palaniuk is a lone figure on Fernan Lake that stretches more than a mile from the west end to the east. There are no hockey players. There are no ice skaters, no people walking dogs, no one driving an ATV or pulling a sled.
It's just Palaniuk, near the middle of the lake, about 150 yards from shore, right where he was the other day.
He's expecting company.
"I might have a friend show up. I told him they were kind of biting today," he said.
It is quiet, but for Jake brakes sounded by westbound truck drivers on an icy Interstate 90.
His day started around 11 a.m., and he'll stay until dark. Just a few days ago, he caught 20 perch in a few hours, using maggots for bait on a glow hook that hangs suspended, 14 feet from the surface, in the 38-degree water.
They're difficult to fillet, but worth it.
"They're really good eating," he said.
There's a variety of fish in Fernan, he explains. Besides the perch and pike he's after, there are crappie, large- and smallmouth bass and even kokanee in the water under his boots.
When he's bored, when the bobbers sit still in the 8-inch holes he cut through the ice with his chain saw, he listens to country music on his earbuds.
"I've got my radio going on," he said, smiling. "That keeps me kind of entertained. When you're fishing for pike, you don't do a lot."
Even though he's alone, Palaniuk doesn't worry about falling through the ice. Not now, anyway. It's rock solid. And he's not fretting about shoveling or snowblowing or staying warm like everyone else on this North Idaho winter's day.
Instead, he's enjoying solitude and silence, not from the city where people are busy battling Mother Nature.
Let them.
"It's the quietness, I guess, that brings me back."