Ice Tribes

James Card is a newspaper editor and journalist. He is the former editor of Ice Fishing magazine and the author of The Dawn Patrol Diaries: Fly-Fishing Journeys under the Korean DMZ (Nebraska, 2024) and Chainsaw Love: Field Notes on the World's Most Dynamic Power Tool. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Drake, Rolling Stone, and other publications.

"Equal parts celebration and elegy, Ice Tribes captures the unique spirit and stubbornness of those who elect to spend winters 'on the ice.' Being a native ice person, I was immediately transported back to my childhood: ice-fishing with Dad using tip-ups or jigs, ice-skating with my siblings, and going to see the sturgeon fishing in Winnebago. James Card brings alive what is so quickly being lost as we also lose the ice. It's a story about ecology, unique cultures, and memory. I enjoyed this book immensely!"--Andrew Rypel, professor and director of the School of Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences at Auburn University "Maine has lobster traps. Florida has Hemingway's marlin boats. The Midwest has fishing with sharp augurs and little shacks spread across thousands of pothole lakes. James Card is a brilliant guide to the Heartland's hard water and a prose master who has given us a Midwestern masterpiece."--Jon Lauck, editor of Middle West Review and author of The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest