Intrepid ice fisherman shares tools and tricks

Rob Moore is a typical outdoorsy kind of guy.  He hunts, he fishes, he hikes.  “I love to fish,” he said. “Whether it’s from a boat or on the ice, I just love it.”

“When I was just a boy living in Cooperstown, I fished behind Bassett Hospital,” he said, before divulging a sportsman’s secret. “That’s a perfect spot for fly fishing and salmon fishing during the summer. As a matter of fact, I learned how to swim in that lake.”

Mr. Moore’s father taught him how to ice fish on Lake Otsego when he was young.  “My father and I were out on the ice and the first thing I did was catch a sunfish,” he said. “That got me hooked.”

Mr. Moore left Cooperstown when he was ten years old in 1971, moving west to the San Fernando Valley.  He taught scuba diving and did a lot of spear fishing for 15 years, then moved on to construction before he moved back to this area in 2010.  He is a now a local construction contractor.

“I’ve always loved fishing, any kind of fishing,” he said. “Typically, any fishing is better either in the mornings or evenings, both ice fishing and boat fishing. You have to be all about safety on the ice.”

Being ‘all about safety’ means a careful routine for Rob Moore and anyone wandering out onto a frozen lake.

“First, we take a ‘Spud Bar’ to the ice,” he said. “It’s a steel rod with a chisel on the end of it. You slam that on the ice three or four times to see if it breaks through the ice.”

“The rule of thumb is for a person, the ice should be a minimum of three-and-a-half inches thick. If