Wade Stock proudly displayed the amenities in the house he built: handmade woodwork, stove, television, stereo system and beds to sleep as many as eight people.
Not an unusual scene inside a Minnesota house, but this is the Stock family's winter home-away-from-home, perched on about 2 feet of ice on Lake Waconia. Inside, Stock eased a hook and line into the lake through one of four holes drilled in the ice.
"We'll fry the fish when we get home," he said, referring to the 8 crappies and 20 sunfish sitting in a nearby bucket.
During Upper Midwest winters, communities of ice houses spring up on otherwise desolate frozen lakes as anglers turn to what they call "hardwater fishing."
"It's a lifestyle," said Greg Melstrom, who owns an outdoors store and bait shop near Lake Minnetonka, just west of the Twin Cities. "We're outdoor people."
Of course, weather is taken into account, particularly when warmer conditions loom. Minnesota officials have set deadlines to get the houses off the ice - Feb. 28 in the south, March 15 in the north.
Stock builds houses in the summer, making winter the perfect time to seek refuge at an ice house not far from the family's home in Watertown, just west of Minneapolis. He said it's a place to "get away from work and all the other problems."
But, ice fishing hasn't always been so comfortable.
"We would sit outside on a bucket and freeze," said Stock, who took up the winter sport as a teen. "I didn't like to fish much because it was too much work."
Nowadays, gas-powered augers drill holes in the ice in seconds. Heated ice houses make subzero temperatures a non-factor.
In the Stocks' ice house, as in many others on Waconia, the TV screen is hooked up to an underwater camera that shows what kind of fish lurk below - key information when it comes to choosing bait.
Inside Jan Schultz's house, the only action the camera picks up is the bait dangling from a short pole held by Schultz's 88-year-old mother, Eileen Guderyahn.
Schultz said she likes the camera, because "when you're not catching anything, at least you can watch them. And you can always turn on Wheel of Fortune at night."
Dave Genz, a Minnesota Fishing Hall of Famer, travels the country to teach people how to use the new technology. Although the camera can help find fish, anglers must be mobile and many ice houses now are on wheels, he said.
The tradition Genz learned from his grandfather - chopping a hole, staying in one place and hoping the fish will come to him - is history.
"Now, we fish more like it's summer out there," said Genz, 57. "You have to be able to move to the fish."
Many people who grew up in Minnesota's ice fishing tradition note that it's not only about the fish.
Playwright and storyteller Kevin Kling set one of his theatrical works in an ice house to give the main character a time and place to reflect. Part of the allure, he said, is getting away from life's toils to spend time with friends.
"With how fast the world is, it's nice to go to a place where time isn't really a part of the equation," Kling said.
