For years, Alligator Lake has enjoyed a reputation as a barely-off-the-beaten-path hotspot for avid anglers.

Alligator’s not near any sizeable towns (it straddles the borders of T34 MD and T28 MD). It’s not adjacent to a well-traveled paved road (Route 9 is five miles or so away). It’s not remote, but unless you have a working knowledge of basic Stud Mill Road geography, or unless you have a pal who takes you there, it’s not the kind of place you just stumble across on your own.

But since Alligator Lake is known as a place where you may hook onto a feisty landlocked salmon, many people swear by the words, “Alligator just after ice out.”

Others make annual pilgrimages to the lake during the winter, when there’s a two-line limit on ice fishing gear.

According to Gregory Burr, the state’s fisheries biologist specialist for the Downeast Region, Alligator is still popular. And it’s still producing.

Burr checked in via e-mail the other day, and said he stopped by Alligator on Jan. 1 to check out the action.

He arrived at the public landing and found 31 vehicles and plenty of fishermen had already arrived.

Burr reported anywhere from 6 to 12 inches of ice on Alligator, and spent a bit of time surveying the success of the assorted fishing parties.

“I interviewed 21 parties with 77 anglers,” Burr reported. “These anglers caught 93 salmon and five brook trout in all.”

The size breakdown of salmon: 13 were under 14 inches, and 20 were between 14 and 16. Another 47 fish were between 16 and 20 inches, and 11 were longer than 20 inches.

Of those 93 salmon, conservation-minded anglers kept relatively few.

The biggest salmon of the day, Burr reported, was a 5-year-old fish that measured 233/4 inches and weighed 41/2 pounds.

Of the five wild brook trout caught, all were released.

Alligator has a restrictive bag limit (as well as its limitation to just two lines in the water), and the fact that so many people headed there on opening day illustrates the reputation it enjoys.

Anglers are allowed to keep only one fish per day, and brook trout must be longer than 14 inches. There is a no-kill protective slot on all salmon between 16 and 20 inches.

Burr said the slot limit has worked well.

“[The slot limit] has been in place since 1996 and has worked well in balancing the catch between the ice-fishing and open-water seasons,” Burr said. “It protects the 3-year-old and some of the 4-year-old salmon from harvest and emphasizes management for bigger salmon while protecting first-time female spawners and perpetuating the wild production of salmon.”

Burr notes that all brook trout caught in Alligator Lake are wild fish, since none have been stocked since 1994. And the salmon? Well, he says that between 20 and 40 percent of the salmon caught are wild fish.

In other fishing news, Burr reported that Chris Kane of Bar Harbor had an opening day to remember when he landed a 7-pound, 1-ounce salmon at Eagle Lake. The fish was 271/2 inches long.

Since we’re talking about ice fishing, it might be a good time to pass along some more information on Beech Hill Pond’s new, less-restrictive bag limit.

Some anglers were confused by the report, published in this column a week ago. A quick glance at the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife’s law book showed that no changes were scheduled until the end of the 2003 season (ice fishing laws exist in a book published every two seasons).

One angler planning to make a trip to Beech Hill called both Augusta and Bangor DIF&W offices and reported that wardens knew nothing about the new regulation, and would continue to enforce the law “by the book.”

But according to Rick Jordan, the assistant regional fisheries biologist in Jonesboro, those communications problems have been ironed out, and wardens are fully aware of the new rule designed to begin restoring Beech Hill’s togue fishery as soon as possible.

“We did this in kind of a hurry-up fashion, and we didn’t notify the wardens,” Jordan said earlier this week. “We normally have a form that we use, but we did it a little different way. That’s why they were out of the loop and uninformed.”

That communications glitch has been dealt with, both in Augusta and Bangor, Jordan said, and anglers don’t have to worry about being cited for violating rules no longer in effect.

The new Beech Hill rule, in case you missed it: 14-inch minimum length on togue, a six-togue limit, with no more than one togue over 23 inches kept per day.

It’s a new year, and the age-old saying demands an out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new approach to things.

Sometimes, that’s a good thing.

For the past year, for instance, we’ve all been griping about the larger-than-life licenses the DIF&W issued us sportsmen.

For those of you who always wanted to fill your wallet with green stuff … well, I guess you got your wish.

Let’s just say that these DIF&W-sponsored green meanies weren’t the kind of wallet fodder I had in mind.

If you’re unfamiliar with the controversy, last year’s licenses came on a standard 81/2- by 11-inch piece of paper, and after engaging in an exercise of folding futility, you could reduce it to a nice, thick license-lump. Then, you stashed the license into a DIF&W-provided plastic pouch, and tried to squash it into shape by tucking it into your wallet and repeatedly sitting on it.

Well, after a nice visit with the folks at the Hampden Town Office, I’m the proud owner of the new, improved 2003 model, and I’m happy to report that it’s nothing like the unwieldy behemoth it replaces.

With a simple tear, the new license reduces to a manageable 31/2-by-11 slip of paper, and with a couple of well-placed folds, it’s smaller (and thinner) than a regular business card.

As advertised, the licenses do include the transportation tags for hunters that last year’s model lacked.

Now that the license snafu is taken care of, I guess we’ll have to find something else to complain about.

The Quest: Every now and then, I may ask you for help on a future column with a (hopefully) simple question I’ll tuck down here … comfortably out of the way.

So far, you readers have been very helpful in these “quests,” and I appreciate that.

This week’s quest: I’m looking for an ice shack. Not for myself. Just to visit. And it can’t be a normal, run-of-the-mill ice shack. It’s got to have something that sets it apart from all those other outhouses-on-skis. Maybe it’s a hundred years old, and held together with nothing more than chewing gum, tinfoil, and plenty of positive thoughts. Maybe it’s a deluxe model, complete with a satellite TV system. Perhaps it’s on pontoons … “just in case.”

My own ice shack? Well, it’s on its second life, after its previous owner nearly burned it (and himself) to a crisp one frigid January day up on Long Lake in St. Agatha. Of course, I’ve already told you that story.

And that’s the point, I guess: It’s all about the story. Every ice shack, whether ugly or well-maintained, has one. Where it came from. What makes it special. And that’s what I’m fishing for.

Call or write. I’ll visit, and you can tell me about your shack. And I bet we’ll get some fishing in, too.

Look forward to hearing from you.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.