Ben Grandbois was drinking with a buddy at a raucous bar in the middle of frozen North Lida Lake when everything suddenly stopped.

"Somebody yelled, 'bobber down!' and it got all quiet," says the 28-year-old construction engineer from Minneapolis, about three hours southeast of this town of 2,500.

A young woman started pulling on a fishing line that dipped through the floor of the bar and about two feet of ice into the dark, cold water below. Soon, she brought up a 24-inch walleye. "It was a gorgeous fish," he says.

It was just another night at Hillbillies Ice Hole, a bar about half a mile by ice road from shore. Many bars in the Upper Midwest cater to ice fishermen, but the Ice Hole is one of the few spots where patrons can go out for a drink and maybe a bite to eat—while continuing to fish.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal.