If you thought ice-fishing was all about serious drinking, and occasionally catching very small fish if you can be bothered, take a look at this video. The angler here (who appears fairly inexperienced) lands a very big brown trout while ice fishing on Lake Michigan. It’s a fish you’d be ecstatic on a fly: hell, you’d be pleased to land it however you were fishing – though a big fish like that falling to an ice fisherman seems somehow, wrong. My first experience of ice-fishing was in Oulu, Finland, where I accidentally entered a 48-hour marathon team ice-fishing contest – on my own. I had no hut, no heater,m and gave up about 11pm befor eI turned into an ice sculpture, and drank vodka in the organisers’ caravan, while watching the teams catch thousands of  ruffe. As I recall, the winning team had something like 56 kilos of them, and around 300 kilos of ruffe were caught, killed and sent off to the local hospital. Lucky old patients.