Index
Northwestern Wilderness Of Maine
Personal Essays
Ice Shanty
The transition to Maine from our Maryland dairy had it confusing moments. In Maryland the first day of spring meant the beginning of warm sunny days and flowers blooming everywhere. In Maine the first day of spring was just another number on the calendar. The first day of spring in Maine should really be during the usual ice out of Big Wood Pond, around the first week of May.
During our first week in Maine, I told my father I was going to dig worms and go ice fishing. Trying to hold back the laughter, he told me to dig them out behind the wood shed. I realized how ridiculous my suggestion of digging worms must have sounded the moment I opened the door. The snow drifts were even with the rooftops and the temperature was hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit. When I came back indoors, he offered the frozen smelt, he purchased earlier, to use as bait. He gave me a miniature fish rod he had put together the night before, along with an ice skimmer.
I was excited about going ice fishing for the first time. I gathered my new fishing tools and frozen smelt bait and walked out onto the snow covered ice several hundred yards from the shore of Big Wood Pond, in front of our log cabin.
Grasping the oversized steel post hole chisel, we transported from our Maryland dairy, I began to cut a hole in the ice large enough to pull a record size brook trout through. I had cut through over three feet of ice, when water gushed though the remaining thin ice at the bottom of the hole, the chisel stuck in the lake bottom about a foot below the ice. Disappointed, I gathered my tools and headed further from shore.
After cutting the second hole in the ice, I fished for hours without getting a bite.
As I gained experience, a few years later, I rebuilt a small abandoned ice fishing shanty I had found in pieces scattered among the boulders on the shore of Hog Island. I bought a small wood stove, stove pipe, a damper, and pipe cap for it. The floor had a hole to fish through. I painted the shanty red and nailed an old pair of wooden skis to the bottom of it.
Moving the ice shanty over the snow was easy. Clearing a space on the ice, where the water was deep enough, I cut a large hole in the ice. Moving the ice shanty, aligning the hole in the floor with the hole in the ice was simple enough. I banked the ice house with snow to keep out the cold wind.
After lighting the stove and setting the damper for the first time, the ice shanty became a cozy place to fish. I was catching smelt within moments after dropping a line.
The next day, I noticed my ice shanty was frozen to the ice. The weight of the snow on the ice or the atmospheric pressure pushes down on the ice and forces lake water up through the holes in the ice and freezes. After a couple of hours of cutting ice around the floor, I learned to lift the ice shanty off the ice, placing it on large chunks of fire wood.
Reading the ice fishing laws, I discovered how many lines I could fish with at one time. Cutting holes in the ice, within eyesight of the shanty, and setting fish traps was plenty of exercise. A fish trap looks like a folded puzzle with a spool of line attached to the one end. You unfold the ice trap, placing the spool end into the water of the ice hole. Two horizontal laterals keep it from slipping through the hole. A flexible metal strip with a red flag attached to one end is set to release when a fish is on the line.
Your heart races when you see a red flag pop up above the snow. Sometimes the wind releases the flag, so you do plenty of running for nothing. Each time you see a red flag, you imagine a record breaking trout on the end of your line and run like the wind.
It is just as much fun to fish during the night, even when the temperatures are sub zero.
One crystal clear night I was fishing, the stars seemed to be the size of basketballs. A week earlier, there was a warm spell and all of the snow that covered the ice melted. The temperature dropped and the water from the melted snow froze.
I lit the stove and was fishing, when unexpectedly I got a strike. The tug on the line practically pulled me into the ice hole. It released and the line became limp. I pulled up the hook and baited it.
I heard a loud roar, so I quickly opened the door and stepped outside. I could hear the ice cracking from one end of the lake to the other in several places. I have heard of thermal contraction on concrete highways, but I didn't know it happened on ice covered bodies of water. I never imagined a noise this loud, it lifted the hair on the back of my neck.
I stepped back inside and closed the door and began fishing again, jiggling my bait, trying to entice whatever took my bait earlier, to return.
It was getting warm inside. I had forgotten to set the damper, the stove was roaring like a blast furnace. I unzipped my ski jacket.
From time to time I jiggled my bait. I heard a faint noise that sounded like something scratching on the outside wall of the ice shanty. The hair on the back my neck raised again. I thought about the stories I heard the older natives of this area telling of wolves.
I reached for my axe, and placed it where I could grab it incase a hungry wolf decided to crash through the door on my ice shanty and try to eat me for dinner.
I continued to jiggle my line, hoping the hungry wolf would go away. The scratching got louder and louder. I began to sweat. I jiggled my bait faster. The scratching picked up tempo. I stopped and reached for the axe and bolted outside to confront the hungry wolf.
There was nothing outside. The light from the stars made it bright enough to see a long way. I walked around the ice shanty and still I saw nothing. I held a flash light up to the ice shanty wall where I thought I heard the scratching noises. I didn't see any marks.
Puzzled and still shaking I went back inside and continued jiggling my bait. I heard the scratching again. I felt numb as chub, when I discovered it was the zipper of my ski jacket rubbing on the wall of the ice shanty, as I jiggled my bait.
I locked up the ice shanty and walked home, happy there wasn't a hungry wolf following me. The stars were beautiful.