[wind blowing]
- When winter sweeps across Door County
it arrives on a howling wind.
- Some days you're here before your truck warms up.
[truck engine]
- Fishing partners Will Henriksen and John Koessl leave
at sunrise from the shores of Sister Bay.
- All set John. Go for it.
[snowmobile engine]
- Get on the ice about 7 o'clock in the morning.
And then it's a cold, bitter ride out there.
- Out there is a two mile trek onto ice
and into no man's land.
The road to work is cold and bumpy.
Tree limbs mark the route and warn of danger.
- Probably the hardest part of my job
is dealing with the weather.
It changes quick and one minute it will be calm
and the next it's galling.
It gets dangerous on the water.
- This time of year, Will's office is a shanty on the ice
where he gets the wood stove going and gets to work running
his commercial ice fishing venture.
- Being on the water, day in and day out,
some of the most amazing picture-worthy sunrises and
sunsets I get to see every day.
I enjoy the winter season and ice fishing
because it's kind of my thing.
We'll usually lift about 6 to 8, maybe 10 nets a day.
We're hoping for 300, 400 pounds.
I mean we'll be happy just if we see fish.
- The catch of the day is whitefish.
- There's one.
[fish noise]
Well, hello to you too.
The easiest way to get them out is clearing their heads and
just kind of pushing them through.
Sometimes it's easier than it looks.
- Easy until one of these ends up in your net.
- They're kind of like a bottom feeder.
But a lot of places want them and use them
for like Friday fish fries and what not.
This is called a Burbot.
- Burbot or eelpout. It goes by many names.
But on the menu of those fancy restaurants,
they are called "lawyers."
- We're able to supply almost 25 different businesses
with fish and I mean it's all local.
We process it and deliver it
and it's on your plate the same night.
- Will knows these waters well and got an early start.
- Growing up my dad was a commercial fisherman.
As a kid he used to take my car seat and put it on the dash of
the boat and take me with him.
So I've been on a boat my entire life.
[snowmobile engine]
- For Will this is a lifelong dream and it's been a lifelong
friendship with John.
- Went to high school and everything together.
Now we do this together.
Out here, like it's just the two of us.
And we get along pretty well
so there's no real arguing or nothing.
So now we'll pull it back underneath and
get ready to lift the other one.
- One net down. Five more to go.
The nets are lowered 65-70 feet to the depths of Green Bay.
- They go right to the bottom.
- The nets stand 15 feet high and extend out 100 yards
in both directions from the shanty.
A guideline is tied to the net so it can be hauled in and then
fanned out again as John pulls the rope back across the ice.
Once the nets are dropped ...
- Ready?
[snowmobile engine revs]
- ... they drag the ice shanty to another hole farther out
on the ice where they can retrieve two more nets.
It's proving to be a good day of fishing and work.
- To end up with a 100 out of the first two,
I mean that's good fishing for us.
Stories of the old guys, they used to set 100 nets
in a winter.
If they got a fish every net, they were happy.
- Just like the old guys before them,
all the work out here is done by hand.
- It's a tough lifestyle.
I mean you're working your butt off for every penny you make.
If it was easy, there'd be more people doing it too.
[groans]
- Handling the nets can be brutal
in bone-chilling, ice cold water.
- The worst part's just the dampness from the water.
Get'em a little bit damp and all of a sudden
the cold sinks right in.
- Cold hands but a warm heart out here on the ice.
[door creaks]
This is life in rural Door County.
- It's peaceful, you know.
Everyone knows everyone.
And everyone has each other's back.
It's ... my home.
It's my source of employment.
It's ... I mean it's where I love to be.
[snowmobile engine]