Last week, my lovely bride and a few of her work colleagues piled into her large white Buick and drove directly into the teeth of a monster snowstorm, determined to reach a business conference in Charlotte, N.C. Some 23 hours of white-knuckle driving through all manner of frozen precipitation didn't keep my fisherman's daughter spouse — a force of nature in her own right — from arriving on time.

It's been a brutal winter, on land and on the water, too. Just ask the fishermen working Lake Michigan for Susie-Q Fish Co. in Two Rivers, Wis. The company's two trawl boats and one gillnetter work Lake Michigan all winter long. But this year, extreme cold and ice have been a real problem.

"We've had the worst winter I've seen since 1977," Susie-Q Fish Co. president Mike LeClair told the Mantiwoc (Wis.) Herald Times Reporter.

We're talking wind chills on the lake reaching 20 below, folks. And then there's the ice.

"The ice is really taking a toll on us this year," Susie-Q skipper John Kulpa Jr., told the newspaper. "Every day we have to find a place to troll around in." The punishing trifecta of cold, wind and ice has made it difficult for the company's gillnetter to find its nets.

And of course there's the ice build up on the boats that needs to be hammered off. LeClair said it can sometimes be six inches thick. See for yourself what the boats are dealing with in this HTR Media video.