"What are you doing out here?” Paul asked me as I walked up to him on Lake Monona one frigid day. “It is so cold!!”

He wasn’t wrong, but I found his concern pretty funny since he was the guy set up ice fishing without even a shelter. Wisconsinites always seem fairly immune to the cold, but this was a serious arctic front, and we were some of the only people outside.

However, Paul is a serious fisherman. He said he's been out ice fishing every day since December 29 this season (48 days in a row), and he wasn't going to let the extreme cold stop his streak. Paul started fishing 52 years ago when he was about 16. Now that he's retired, he's able to get out there even more, without work or kids at home. Over the years he’s become quite skilled at fishing, and now it’s just really fun for him. He said fishing in the fall before a full moon in the evening can be a particularly good time, and he did admit that for ice fishing, a little warmer is better. But he caught a bluegill while we were chatting.

Paul has a patch on the back of his jacket declaring him a 40-year member of the Fishing Hall of Fame. He said he caught his first record-breaking fish in 1976 in Hayward, Wisconsin—a white sucker fish. At the time, he didn't know anything about breaking records, but the fish hatchery weighed and recorded his catch, and a little while later he got a call from the Fishing Hall of Fame letting him know he had broken a record. He's now broken more than 50 records, and he clearly enjoys doing so.

I asked him what he did with all the fish he catches, and he said he met a Laotian fisherman years ago who told him his family really enjoyed fish. Paul now has about a dozen families he drops his catch off with, since he usually has an excess. Sometimes the Laotian families share some of the dishes they've made with the fish Paul brought and he enjoys the spices.

Paul said his goal is to catch a million fish. That sounded crazy until he told me he was already over 900,000. I have no doubt this goal is within his reach.