Hi MFitz---
I remember well when my father took me ice fishing for the first time in January, 1974. In fact, it was the first time for both of us. I was around 11....We went to Waldron's bait shop in Meredith, (long gone now), bought some smelt and 1 or 2 tip-ups. We went out on the ice near my parents' place. We used an axe and a long crow bar to chop the hole in the ice, (we had NO clue what the heck we were doing...)
My father put the smelt on the hook and started feeding it into the hole. We were close to shore....maybe 4' of water. Suddenly, BAM....something grabbed the smelt and was off. My father set the hook and pulled it in. It was huge...25"....several pounds. "What is it, Dad?", I asked, "a trout?". "Yah, I think it's a rainbow...look how shiny it is and how it reflects the light...", he said. My father was a very experienced salt-water fisherman, but had never been fresh-water fishing.
Not too long after the excitement died down, a "real" ice-fisherman was coming to shore to go home from further out on the lake. We said hi, and he asked if we had any luck. Proud as peacocks, we said, "yah, look at this big rainbow trout". The guy got a look of horror and said, "JESUS....that's no rainbow, that's a salmon...get it off the lake or you'll be hung"
By this time, Mr or Ms Salmon had long expired, so fearing for our lives, we packed up our axe, crowbar, tip-ups, and of course the salmon, and got back to the house as fast as we could. That was our lesson learning that you cannot take salmon through the ice.
40+ years later, I can still remember the taste of that lesson!
