On Wednesday, January 17, my buddy Irv and I went up to Lake Simcoe to set up the huts and get ready for the ice fishing season. There is a real shortage of minnows, but after a considerable length of time trying to get minnows, we succeeded. Our huts are out about 6 miles from Beaverton, so we didn’t get there until about 9 A.M. At that point we put the minnows into the bucket and hung them down the hole while we cleaned and set up the huts. At about 11 A.M., we had everything ready so we pulled up the bucket, put 4 minnows on the lines, and sent the bucket back down the hole. In a few minutes, a fish came along and stole my minnow so I went to pull the bucket and the handle broke! Down it went to the bottom, full of minnows. For the next 2 hours, we tried to retrieve it and finally gave up. At this point, I went for a walk to see if anyone had a few minnows that they could spare. I found a couple of guys who loaned us 24 minnows and I promised to return the favor. We started fishing again and for the afternoon we had 6 hits and caught 3 fish. All were white fish.