Mighty nice ice house helped hook lots of fish

Myron “Buzz” Watts was born in Wrenco, Idaho, on Oct. 21, 1934, and has lived in this area all of his life. He and Shelda Rigby were married in 1953; they had four children and they adopted two Native American girls. Today, Buzz shares with us, in his own words, his memories of the time he was involved in helping his dad with his “Nice Fish House.”

“With the cold weather and limited time to spend outside around the place, it is a good time to ice fish — if one has an urge to sit in the cold and wait for a hungry fish to swim past.

“I am not much on fishing, but chasing white tail deer is another story for me. I can forget my shop for a spell, or miss a good dinner, to go chase white tail. Ask my daughter, Kathy, because she went with me a time or two.

“Any way, it seems that wherever I go the subject of ice fishing comes up and that brings back some old memories.

“I think it was the winter of 1947-’48 that my family had moved to town, down on 323 Fourth Ave. There wasn’t much work to be found at that time of year except shoveling snow.

“My dad, Myron, and Albert Fox decided to go ice fishing and they really went in style.

“They built a fish house that was big enough for two men to be comfortable in. It was about five by eight feet in the inside, well-insulated, and large enough to have two fish holes in the floor, a tiny wood stove in one corner, and some five gallon pails for the fish they caught.

“There was also a covered five gallon pail that was for the necessities that come along from time to time, and two well padded stools.

“The house was built on runners that had rails on the bottom to make it easy to pull on the ice or snow.

“When this “condo” was finished they asked me to help them pull it down to the City Beach, where there was no shortage of fish houses spotted around anywhere one might look. They, for some reason unknown to me, picked a spot about a mile and a half, or so, from shore headed somewhat toward Bay View.

“After they got set up, and the holes drilled thru the ice, I stayed long enough to get warm and watch them catch some fish. I then headed for home, which took me about forty five minutes or so at a good pace.

“In the afternoon, or when the fish quit biting, they would head for home. They would anchor the fish house good, load their fish buckets on a sled that had a wooden box attached, and head for the shore before dark. The next day, at day light, they would leave to go back and fish.

“When they got closer to Bay View than Sandpoint, they would drive to Bay View and walk out to their ice house. This went on all winter long ’til the ice started breaking up in the spring. I went with them when they brought the little “condo” home on a trailer behind the family car.

“This kind of fishing I could handle ’til I’d get to thinking of something I could be doing in my shop.”