ice fishing

hey dudes! on Saturday joan gené and me went ice fishing. do you remember the couple who gave us a ride to that high school last semester? their kindness was awesome and a few days ago they called us again asking whether we would like to spend one day with them doing an outdoor activity. the two of us agreed without hesitating. it looked like a great experience and eventually, it was!

the man in the picture is Dave. we met w/ him in the morning and headed to his countryside cottage some miles away from state college. over there, we took the supplies needed and did a brief overlook to his property. next stop was black moshannin state park. in the USA, every state has its own extension of field with recreational purposes such as hiking, boating, fishing, etc.
national parks are simply the same but with some unique landscape and a huge federal investment.

after parking, our goal was to get to know how ice fishermen carry out their hobby. it was great fun to hear their stories and explanations about how the tools worked:

notice the two different kinds of drill: the automatic and the manual one. the sled is used to bring all the supplies with them until the right place where they'll start making the hole.

we also met a nice group very well prepared: they were listening to a radiocassete, cooking some hamburgers in a bbq and enjoying a lively chat. we managed to take a picture with them:

at that time we were almost starving so dave drove to the nearest town and we had lunch in a cozy american restaurant. we ordered a fish sandwich (which was delicious) and leafed through some hunting and fishing magazines...

then we came back to dave's property and tried to fish in his pond. it's not a big pond but the tickness of its ice was enough. we used some of his fishing rods and placed a wax worm in its hook. i can't recall last time i went fishing, maybe in summertime by the shore of comarruga with some of my friends...but for sure never did ICE fishing before. anyway, joan prepared the hole and broke the ice with the help of a metal stick.

as you can imagine, it was a great opportunity to explore these natural spaces lost somewhere deep in pennsylvania, so thank you Dave!
next weekend it's THON time! i'll tell you about that soon: one of the biggest events in state college!