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This is the text of Brooks Big John telling about the long winters in Lac du Flambeau, recorded July 5, 1998 by Michael Kline in Washington, D.C.

... Grew up in Lac du Flambeau and was taught the tradition of spearing through the ice when I was younger. During the cold winters, the long winter months up there, the ice comes in before Christmas, sometime mid-December, and then the ice is out sometime in April. So, it’s quite a long fishing season. We spend a lot of that time, our weekends, out spearing on the ice. Friends of ours go out every weekend. We use our own hand-carved decoys that are weighted with lead and have the tin fins, and we use them to lure in the muskies in that we spear.

Our people have been doing it for over 100 years the same way we do it now today. And we’ll continue to do it that way for my kids and the kids after them.

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