8th-graders enjoy day ice fishing

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As a brisk wind howled across the frozen surface of Fields Pond on Friday morning, some eighth-graders from Dedham school scurried back and forth, checking ice fishing traps.

Others sought refuge by huddling around a fire pit on the shore.

And Ty Taylor? He just kept on working.

“This is gonna be my little igloo,” Taylor said, taking a brief break from his snow-carpentry duties. “I’m gonna sit right in it and it will block the wind so I don’t have a false flag.”

Taylor’s method: Use your gloved hands as a “saw” to cut the crusty snow into blocks, then carefully pile those snow bricks on top of each other.

Quickly, Taylor’s semi-circular igloo began to take shape. One foot high. Two feet. Three feet. Eventually, many of his classmates – apparently deciding that staying busy in the sun beat shivering in the shade on shore – pitched in to help.

And though his flag hadn’t flown (falsely or otherwise), Taylor and his classmates seemed to be having a great time.

According to Kyle Nickerson, the eighth-grade class at Dedham School earned a Friday field trip and ended up out on the ice.

“The first thing we do in P.E. class is we get 25, 50, or 75 points based on behavior and stuff,” Nickerson said. “After we get 500 points, we earn a free trip. We can either go somewhere or stay after school and do something. And we all voted on going ice fishing.”

A variety of activities were planned for Friday. Snow soccer was an option. So was snowshoeing.

But in the early hours of their field trip, ice fishing took lead billing.

At least, it did for most of the 20 or so students and teachers … most of the time.

But when the wind’s blowing and your flags aren’t flying, you’re apt to find another way to kill time.

Nickerson’s idea: Let’s have a fish fry.

Unfortunately for him, the only fish he could find worth frying was a smelt.

Officially, the smelt was supposed to be bait. Unofficially, it turned into a snack.

“It only takes a few minutes,” Nickerson said, preparing to roast his second smelt of the day over the open fire. “Not too long. It was pretty good. It tastes like fish.”

Nickerson’s one-at-a-time smelt-roasting method might not catch on with the masses, but he had his technique pretty well figured out.

“You stick it on a stick like a hot dog. You want the stick right here,” he said, pointing just in front of the tail, “so that the meat is still there and you’re not wasting the meat.”

Nearby, the flag on Courtney Maynard’s trap began flapping. Unfortunately for Maynard, there were plenty of eager classmates much closer to the hole than she was.

By the time she arrived at the hole, a friend had already pulled up her 161/2-inch pickerel.

According to the rules of the class’s unofficial derby, the fish was Maynard’s.

But the fact remained: The first fish Maynard had ever “caught” through the ice hadn’t actually been caught by her at all.

“Somebody else did it,” she said, smiling nonetheless.

A hundred yards away, ed tech Emily Bell stood on the frozen pond, staring at her trap for a bit, then glancing off into the distance.

“I got my trap set just a few minutes ago, and I’m waiting for the red flag to come up,” she said.

Bell, who grew up in Caribou, was ice fishing for the first time. And if a fish was going to bite … she wanted to be nearby.

“[Plus] it’s warmer here on the ice than it is in the woods,” Bell said with a laugh.

As 11 a.m. approached, the eighth-graders had caught a few fish, roasted a couple smelts, and were keeping busy … and warm. More or less.

But as the hours outdoors began to take their toll, Taylor’s early igloo-building decision looked like a good one.

A crowd of girls huddled behind his structure, then began to expand it.

And nearby, carpenter-turned-foreman Taylor helped a second group of classmates begin work on their own windbreak.

The fish might bite … or they might not. Snow soccer and snowshoeing might be fun … later.

But for the time being, the Dedham School eighth-graders were content to just play in the snow.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Sebago togue’s age confirmed

Greg Burr of the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife called on Friday to let me know that he had examined the derby-winning lake trout caught by Steven Emerson of Addison and thought readers might be interested in what he found out.

Emerson’s togue measured 381/2 inches long and weighed 22.34 pounds. The fish earned Emerson top honors in the Windham Rotary Derbyfest tourney last weekend.

Togue take a long time to grow that large, and many anglers wondered how old the bruiser actually was. Fisheries biologists perform a test on the inner ear of fish that can pinpoint the age.

“I took the inner ear out and aged it, and [the fish] was 26 years old,” Burr said. “It was stocked in 1979. That fish came from the Finger Lakes strain from New York, which was the only strain stocked down there [in Sebago].”

The fish was a true survivor. Put in historical perspective, when Ronald Reagan was running for his first term as president … that togue was swimming in Sebago.

When the U.S. hockey team shocked the Soviets en route to a gold medal … that togue was passing up smelts that eager fishermen trolled in front of his nose.

And when the Red Sox finally won another World Series title … well, you get the point.

The best news for anglers: There are surely bigger fish in Maine’s second-largest lake. All we’ve got to do is find a way to fool them.

Weather in a nutshell

It seems that in recent years most of us have become less tolerant of the weather surprises that winter frequently foists upon us.

Time was (or so it seems) when nothing short of an honest-to-goodness blizzard was cause for alarm, and most meetings and events (if memory serves) were held when those minor 6-inch flurries cropped up.

Not any more.

In this week’s DIF&W fisheries report, longtime fisheries biologist Paul Johnson shared a few words that made me chuckle.

Here they are:

“Another Monday, another day of elevated media anxiety over an impending snowstorm. Seems that this year we have already had ‘the snowstorm of the century’ and the ‘mother of all snowstorms.’ I guess that leaves us to expect this one will be ‘the mother-in-law of all snowstorms,'” Johnson wrote.

“I hope everyone has their ‘storm pack’ put away for disaster that surely awaits us. As for the fishery personnel in Greenville, it’s winter, it’s cold, the wind blows, it snows – so what? Keep your shovel handy and deal with it!”

Amen to that.

Coming up on ‘Going Outdoors’

In Monday’s “Going Outdoors” segment on ABC-7’s 6 p.m. newscast, we’ll head back to New Hermon Mountain and tell you about the ski area’s popular tubing park.

Owner Bill Whitcomb says that he was reluctant to add tubing three years ago, thinking the activity was a fad. During the recently completed February vacation, tubers actually outnumbered skiers during every session the mountain was open.

If you haven’t been tubing yet, you may want to give it a try. And if you want to get a better idea what the experience is like, I’m sure we’ve got some video footage that will show you what you’re in for.

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