Mike Beauchene remembers the first time he went ice fishing back in the mid-’90s. He was trying to catch “a super huge northern pike” on Bantam Lake in Morris and Litchfield.
Beauchene used to do angler interviews as part of his job and had seen folks catching fish that could barely fit through the hole. He never did catch that pike, but still ice fishes – mostly on smaller Connecticut ponds with his son and daughter, now in their teens.
“My daughter, Katherine, has been going with me since she could toddle,” Beauchene said, recalling an early outing. “One day she and I were fishing. As I was setting up my tip-ups (the devices that signal when a fish grabs your line), I noticed she looked a bit shorter than normal.
