ON UPPER RED LAKE -- We're four miles from shore, past the last cluster of ice houses, at the end of the ice road, approaching a pressure ridge.

But it's not the end of the line for Brad Hawthorne, who's piloting his "Otter Train." The freight cars are three portable ice shelters, and the locomotive is his Polaris 4-wheeler that has tracks instead of wheels.

"Just out there, there should be some dirty water from this pressure ridge," he says over the drone of the motor, not yet squinting into the approaching sunrise. "And we'll be away from all the activity."

The machine surmounts the snowdrifts with ease, and soon we're there: on the edge of a pressure ridge, 100 yards or so away from the nearest sign of human activity.

And, as we'll soon confirm, we're sitting above a pile of walleye.

The lack of features atop this frozen expanse is matched only by the lack of features below the ice.

Upper Red Lake's bottom is primarily a basin, where depth changes of a single foot are noteworthy elements of "structure."

Topside, the only landmarks are groups of ice fishing houses, cul-de-sacs planted off the ice roads that, if not kept plowed amid this year's snow, would surely leave even 4x4 owners marooned. The more you look, the more you see. Perhaps 1,000 houses on this weekend.

And so it is below the ice, where the real landmarks are clusters -- enormous schools sometimes -- of walleye.

The only question is whether the fish will be beneath the houses.

See the article here:

Red Lake ice fishing: On the move for walleye