Ex-hockey player lives good life

BAUDETTE, Minn. — Glance across the seemingly endless expanse of ice and snow that covers the Minnesota side of Lake of the Woods, and you’ll witness a sight that makes people here smile.

It’s ice-fishing season in the border country again, and judging by the hundreds of houses that already dot the big lake north of Pine Island, life is good. The wheels of tourism commerce are turning in full force.

As for the fishing ... well, that’s not bad, either.

Bill Stay, Nick Anthony and Rich Lunzer had little time to enjoy it for themselves on a recent Monday morning. Employees of Ballard’s Resort, they’d already transported a small army of anglers to heated shelters that sat with holes drilled and ready to fish atop 11 inches of ice.

Now, there were three more houses to move: They’d hauled them from shore and across the shallow confines of Four-Mile Bay and were ready for the home stretch — over a narrow strip of Pine Island onto the massive expanse of Big Traverse Bay.

All told, that’s about 4 1/2 miles as the walleye swims.

Ballard’s has a rental fleet of 43 houses, and moving them onto the ice is no small task. The crew at Ballard’s, and most of the other resorts on this end of the lake, had been at it since the previous week, hauling a few houses each day.

There was light at the tunnel, though, Anthony said, as he crossed Pine Island, ice house in tow, and put the lightweight four-wheel drive vehicle he was driving through the paces.

This time of year, the little vehicles — mostly Geo Trackers or Suzuki Sidekicks — are the predominant mode of travel on Lake of the Woods.

They’re light enough for 10 inches of ice and powerful enough to haul the heated, enclosed trailers that most resorts use to carry anglers to the houses early in the season.

The vehicles also do a decent job pulling ice houses, Anthony says, as long the snow’s not too deep. As the ice thickens, resorts switch to bigger, more powerful tracked vehicles such as the Bombardier, a classic Canadian workhorse, to pull houses and transport fishermen.

About that time, 6 inches of snow and a heavy ice house combined to stop Anthony’s Geo Tracker in its tracks north of Pine Island. He revved and rocked, but the vehicle would go no farther. Close enough, he said; the house was lined up with the other rentals over about 25 feet of water, the depth where the fish were biting.

That’s been another plus so far this winter.

“Life’s good when fishing’s good,” he said.

To WCHA hockey fans, at least, Anthony’s name might ring a bell. He played forward and was an assistant captain for the Minnesota Gophers hockey team.

Credit romance for Anthony’s transition from ice hockey to ice fishing.

His wife, Jessie, is the daughter of Ballard’s Resort owners Steve and Joanne Ballard, and he now works as a fishing guide both summer and winter on Lake of the Woods. (Former Gopher teammate Keith Ballard, who plays for the Phoenix Coyotes in the NHL, is his brother-in-law.) It’s a good life, the Faribault, Minn., native says.

“My ‘dream job’ was to be some sort of hunting and fishing guide,” Anthony said. “My degree was in urban forestry, but I was kind of unsure as to where that was going to take me. Since sports had consumed my life since I was 3 years old, I was looking forward to catching up on the finer things of life.”

In Anthony’s case, that was hunting — especially ducks — and fishing.

It’s not an official count, but for the next few months, there might be more houses on the ice than on dry land in Lake of the Woods County.

The county doesn’t have a stoplight, but you could almost make a case for one here on the lake, where ice fishing has exploded the past 20 years.