Dawn at Ginkūnai pond: augers, a sled and dressing for minus fifteen

01The walk in, before light

Saturday 24 January 2026. Up at 06:00, on the first bus out towards Ginkūnai at 06:45, walking from the stop by 07:05 with a headlamp and the sled. Sunrise that day was a little after half past eight, and useful light starts about forty minutes earlier, so there is time to reach the pond, test the ice and drill before the fish wake up. The fields were silver with frost under a clear sky, and the only sound was the sled runners on the packed snow.

Even though the ice had measured twenty-five centimetres the Saturday before, I tested from the bank with the spud and drilled a first hole close in. It was still twenty-four, clear and black under a thin crust of snow. That check takes four minutes, and in six winters I have not once regretted it. A week of hard frost can still sit on top of a spring that nobody told you about.

02Keeping an auger sharp and safe

A hand auger with a 110 mm cutter is plenty for perch, and it is the heaviest and sharpest thing I carry. The blade guard goes on every time the drilling stops, even for a minute, because a sled tipping over or a boot kicking the auger can open a hand or an ankle, and in the cold you feel it late. On the sled it rides with the guard on and the blades facing away from the rope.

Blades go dull for two reasons: grit, and the bottom. In shallow water it is easy to drill straight through the ice into the mud, and a single turn in sand can ruin a sharp pair. I slow down as the auger breaks through, lift it, and clear the slush with the scoop. At home the blades are dried with a cloth and given a touch of oil, and the auger is left to dry fully before it goes back in its bag, or the joints freeze solid at the next trip.

03Dressing for minus fifteen

Cold on the ice is a different animal from cold in town. There is no shelter, the wind has a kilometre to build up, and you spend hours nearly still after a walk that made you sweat. The rule I learned the hard way is to walk in with the jacket open and the hat in a pocket, arrive dry, and then close everything up before the first hole is drilled. A damp base layer never warms up again out there.

I sit on an insulated pad on the sled box with my back to the wind, and I drink sweet tea, warm rather than hot, every half hour whether I want it or not. Cheeks and the tip of the nose get checked in the phone camera now and then; white, waxy patches mean it is time to cover them and move about. When the shivering starts and will not stop, the session is over.

• Base: a long-sleeved wool top and long wool underwear.
• Middle: a fleece jacket and fleece trousers, both roomy.
• Outside: a floating ice suit, windproof and warm, which is also a life jacket.
• Feet: felt-lined boots a size larger than usual, with spare liners in the bag.
• Hands: thin gloves for knots and bait, big mitts on a cord over them.
• Head: a wool hat, a neck gaiter to pull over the nose, and sunglasses for the glare.

04Forty minutes of perch

The first perch came at 07:58, in three metres of water out from the north bank, on a small balance lure. For forty minutes it was one fish after another from two holes a few metres apart, hand-sized mostly, with one that stretched the length of my mitt. At 08:40 it stopped. Nothing on the lure, nothing on the jig and bloodworm, nothing in the three new holes I drilled further out.

I stayed until half past ten for four more fish, packed up, and walked back to the bus with the sun on my face and fingers that still worked. Nine perch went home for the pan. The page for that day has one line underlined: first light, forty minutes, then nothing. It is the same line as last January, and the January before that, and I still arrive at dawn every time to see whether it holds.

05Home, and drying out

The session does not end at the bus stop. At home the sled is unpacked in the hall, the auger blades are dried and oiled, the boot liners come out and go on the radiator, and the ice suit hangs in the bathroom until morning. Wet gear packed away in a bag on Saturday is frozen stiff and smells of pond by the following Saturday, and that is another lesson I learned the hard way.

Then the log. I copy the times and depths from the pencil notebook while they are still fresh, add the air temperature from the little thermometer clipped to the sled and the ice figure from each hole, and write a line about anything that surprised me. That morning the surprise was the quiet. Not one other angler came out onto the pond before ten, and for two hours the only other living thing I saw was a fox trotting across the far end of the ice.