| 'I might be 84 but that's nothing': Three generations gather for a Wisconsin Women Fish outing on Green Bay | |
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Sharon Herlache Kugler, 84, of Algoma has been ice fishing the waters of Green Bay since she could walk.
As a toddler growing up on the Door Peninsula, she'd accompany her parents on trips on the hard water.
"It was part of living here, part of what we all did," Kugler said. "I loved it from the beginning."
A prized family photo from a 1941 outing shows Homer and Helen Herlache, Kugler's parents, jigging through an ice crack. Kugler is just out of the frame; she says she always was included in the trips.
The family's hard-water chariot that day was a 1939 Nash. |
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The early lessons set in and Kugler became a life-long angler. Over the decades she accessed winter fishing spots on foot, by snowmobile and ATV, too.
But in late December she was treated to a first: an airboat ride.
Capt. Zach Burgess of Casco used his airboat "Why Knot" to whisk Kugler and seven other woman anglers out on Green Bay for a day of ice fishing for yellow perch.
In the iffy ice conditions, it was the only powered craft to leave the boat landing that day.
The aluminum hull glided like an air-hockey puck over the smooth sections of snow and ice and, where necessary, bull-dogged through slushy areas. |
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