Episode list

Ice fishing can be intimidating and is often misunderstood. Even some hardcore anglers eschew ice fishing as either boring, miserable, or too gear intensive to be worth their while. This series intends to rectify some of these bogus misconceptions. In the first episode, Steven Rinella takes Tracy Crane, an inexperienced and slightly skeptical first timer, ice fishing at a series of local neighborhood ponds. Their goal is modest and attainable: catch enough panfish for a meal. Steve teaches Tracy the basic why and how of ice fishing for perch and bluegill, they catch a few fish, and share the spoils after.

To pivot off of the ease and accessibility we featured in episode 1, episode 2 goes the opposite direction and shows Cal and Miles embarking on a deep backcountry winter expedition requiring tracked Can-Ams and thousands of pounds of gear. Ice fishing can be simple and local, but it can also be adventurous. Cal and Miles explore a high mountain Montana lake that Cal's been wanting to fish for two decades, in the hopes of catching a large, or at least respectable, burbot. Cal and Miles discover less than optimal conditions, but work through and figure it out. They manage to catch a variety of fish, cook some delicious burbot, and try out fried burbot liver.

Kicking off the tour part of the Fur Hat Ice Tour, Janis Putelis travels to Whitefish Lake, Minnesota and meets up with local wild foods expert Mark Norquist who runs the Modern Carnivore website. In this episode, Mark introduces Janis to dark house ice spearing, a hallowed tradition for winter food gathering in the upper Midwest. Mark and Janis cut a large hole in the ice and then set up a darkened shelter over top of it. They sit at the edge of the hole, holding long handled tridents and waiting for fish to swim through. When the fish do appear, Janis has to be quick and steady of hand if he wants to successfully spear the lake whitefish and northern pike that they're targeting. Finally, chef Lukas Leaf joins them and cooks whitefish cakes out on the ice.

Janis continues the Minnesota segment of the tour on Lake Mille Lacs. He's guided by renowned angler and wildlife biologist Mandy Uhrich. Mandy knows as much about this walleye fishery and the reasons why it has changed over the past generation, as anyone. Mille Lacs is not the ridiculous walleye factory it was 30 years ago, and while that's very difficult for local anglers and businesses to accept, the situation is more complicated than many people realize. By talking with Mandy as well as the region's fish biologist, the former head of the Minnesota DNR, and local anglers and shop owners, Jani tries to better understand what has changed in this lake, why those changes have happened, and what it ultimately means for the area and the ecosystem.

Janis hops the state line over to Wisconsin and travels to Lake Winnebago for the annual lake sturgeon spearing season. Lake sturgeon are ancient and incredible fish, and the communities around Lake Winnebago have long revered and relied on these fish. For generations, people around here have spent their winters trying to spear 100+ pound swimming dinosaurs through the ice. 50 years ago, the sturgeon were disappearing, and a coalition of sturgeon spearers started working together with biologists and fisheries managers to try and bring back this population. They succeeded. Today the sturgeon in the lake are healthy, and thousands of spearers head out every year to try their luck at spearing a sturgeon, but the truth is that this is a difficult game; on an average year only 5% of spearers fill their tags. Local angler Jake Andrews is one of the few who consistently gets sturgeon almost every season.

While part 1 is all about the preparation for sturgeon season, part 2 follows Janis, Jake, and his whole crew as they attempt to achieve the improbable, spear a lake sturgeon by hand through a hole in the ice. Success requires patience, intense focus, quick reflexes, and a steady hand. Will Janis and Jake be one of the triumphant few, or will they go home empty handed? The raucous parties continue, Janis learns how to butcher a sturgeon, and Mary Lou and Vic Schneider teach him how to make caviar. To close the episode, Janis visits some of Jake Andrews' close friends, the Floyd family, who welcome him them into their home and serve him sturgeon 5 different ways.

Pat Durkin shows Janis around Green Bay, Wisconsin and explain to him how the Fox River and the Green Bay of Lake Michigan are success stories for the conservation ethic of the late 20th century. They do a little ice fishing right in downtown Green Bay and take a ride on a questionable homemade airboat, before heading north to Sturgeon Bay where they meet up with local guide JJ Malvitz. The episode caps off in JJ's shop with a big fish fry and a lesson on how to make the perfect Old Fashioned.