Reluctant Dad learned to enjoy ice fishing trips Cozy shanty made outings bearable

My dear departed Dad was the consummate outdoorsman. Throughout his life he traveled far and wide to angle for freshwater and saltwater fish and to hunt a wide variety of furred and feathered game animals. I saw him cast flies to spring salmon when huge chunks of ice were floating past the canoe and the fly line was freezing in the rod guides. Deep snow and freezing temperatures never dissuaded him from stalking deer, even if a pair of snowshoes was essential. But he drew the line at ice fishing.

“Any man who would stand out on a frozen lake in the middle of winter and dangle line down a hole in the ice hasn’t got a hell of a lot else to do” was his forcefully stated sentiment whenever the subject came up.

Dad also had no qualms about questioning my sanity, even wondering aloud if we truly shared the same chromosomes, whenever I would head out with ice auger and pack basket of tip-ups in hand. Then came the year I built my very first ice fishing shanty, and that’s where this story really begins.

Somehow one winter, when I was a junior in high school, I was invited with a friend’s family to spend a day smelt fishing. Pleasant Lake is located in Island Falls and at that time was arguably the best smelt fishing spot in Aroostook County. Despite being a lake, all the locals called it Pleasant Pond, and Joe Edwards ran a lodge, lunch counter, and even a downstairs bowling alley on the shoreline of Birch Point Cove. Joe also maintained and rented out a half-dozen smelt huts by the hour or by the day, and despite the hour-and-a-half drive each way from Mars Hill, that’s where I ended up on my very first smelt-jigging outing.

Handlining for Maine’s smallest game fish was fast and furious, and we even caught the occasional trout, salmon or cusk, always a handful of thrills on light monofilament jigging line. I made several more trips to Birch Point that winter and enjoyed smelting so much I made up my mind to build my own smelt shanty by the next winter. Much to my surprise, Dad managed to show slight interest in my smelt fishing tales, but not so much that he volunteered to join the hut-building crew. Our next-door neighbor and close friend Ken Kingsbury, a retired potato farmer, was not only keen to join my meager construction crew but signed on for the premiere smelt outing as well.

Thanks to Ken’s farmer’s ingenuity and jack-of-all-trades ability, we ended up with a really swank shanty. Lift-top bench seats with inner storage space lined each side of the huge fishing hole in the floor that featured a removable cover for safety. Two storage cabinets, four shelves, a fold-down table, plenty of clothes hooks and three windows rounded out the interior design. Eschewing the extra work and debris of a wood stove, the normal fishing hut heat source, we installed a gas heater, table-top two-burner cook stove, and two gas lights, all able to operate from a 100-pound LP gas cylinder set outside the shanty. Even Dad had to admit the final results were pretty impressive, “if someone were foolish enough to waste time staring into an ice hole!” he clarified with a grin.

By the last week of December there was plenty of ice on Pleasant Pond, so I talked a friend into borrowing his father’s flatbed farm truck, and we shanghaied another buddy and set out for Island Falls. Using a snowmobile and two toboggans, we hauled the hut onto the lake and set it up on cement blocks in the vicinity of a gravel bar that transects Birch Point Cove. Thanks to my previous visits, I had a good idea where the bar was located from pinpointing shoreline landmarks, and I also knew that the most dependable smelt fishing on the entire lake was along that gravel shoal. And where there are lots of smelt, sooner or later there will be hungry salmon and trout prowling for a meal.

Since we had promised to have the truck back before dark, and it took nearly two hours to cut a hole in the ice, position the hut, hook up the gas, and get all the gear inside, we only got to fish about three hours. Despite the middle of the afternoon not being prime time for jigging smelt, our trio nearly filled a gallon jug with feisty silver darters in the 6- to 8-inch range. We also released a fair-sized trout, a short salmon, and a hearty 17-inch salmon since they weren’t legal to keep until January.

Upon arriving home I called Ken to tell him how warm and comfy the cabin was and how good the fishing had been and told him I’d be right over with a feed of smelt. Ken wanted to know how soon he could join me for an outing, so we settled on Sunday night right after he got back from 6 o’clock prayer meeting. Dad had shown my catch more interest than expected and even asked a few questions about the fish shanty and its conveniences. After hanging up the phone, I was sorting some smelt to take across the road to Ken when out of the blue Dad says, “If just the two of you are going, I might ride along to check things out.”

I nearly keeled over in shock!

Bad to worse

All week long I prayed for good weather so Dad wouldn’t have the slightest reason to back out of his first ice fishing trip in more than 30 years. But of course this being Maine and Mother Nature having the sense of humor she does, Sunday evening the mercury stalled at 8 degrees with blustery winds and blowing snow. Nonetheless, with nary a complaint, Dad loaded extra clothes in the pickup as Ken and I packed in fishing gear and food, and by 6:30 we were on the road to Pleasant Pond. The Celtics were in their heyday back then and we tuned the radio to a 7 p.m. game with their rival New York Knicks. Conversation was sparse but pleasant, thankfully with no reference to the squallish weather, and just past 8 o’clock we were parked at Birch Point Lodge and unloading gear.

Our five-minute jaunt across the open lake in gusting winds and waves of blowing, stinging snow was breathtaking, and not in the good way. Finally we reached the shanty, I unlocked the door, and we all scrambled inside, gasping and stowing gear and provisions. Still without one derisive comment from the reluctant ice fisherman. Then Ken tried to light the stove and I put a match to the mantle of a gas light; neither would catch. Not even a sputter. We quickly checked the inside switch to each appliance and all were in proper positions, so Dad and I headed back outside to the only other option, the big LP cylinder. The main valve was open as expected. Dad tapped the side of the 100-pound tank, then hefted it. By the glow of the flashlight I could see his baleful look as he stated, “It’s empty. You’ve got a loose connection somewhere and all the gas has leaked out since last week.”

In less than three minutes Ken found a cross-threaded connector and reseated it properly. No way could we fish in the frigid conditions without heat or lights, so the choices were: go home or find some LP gas. To my amazement, Dad stated he hadn’t driven all that way for his health, so we better refill the tank. I didn’t seem to notice the cold so much dragging the metal gas cylinder back to the pickup. As expected, 9 p.m. on a Sunday night wasn’t a likely time to get any type of gas in the small village of Island Falls, so back to Houlton we drove. The Celtics were in the final minutes of another win when Dad turned the radio down and politely asked, “Are we having fun yet?”

Thanks to a 24-hour truck stop right off the I-95 exit, we got our LP tank filled and were heading back south in less than 20 minutes. Still, it was 10:30 when we once again pulled into Birch Point, the wind hadn’t dropped off a mite and the gas cylinder was a lot heavier going out than it had been coming off the lake. By 11 p.m. the gas line was reattached and we had heat, lights, and Dad was frying hamburgers and toasting buns on the two-burner cook stove while a pan of beans was warming on the top of the other stove. I was on the arm-powered end of an ice auger, and then a heavy chisel, clearing out the fishing hole while Ken scooped ice chunks from the water into a pail and tossed them outside each time the bucket was full.

As it happened our belated supper was ready about the same time my arms gave out and the 4-by-2-foot hole was clear of ice. Without a second thought to setting up a line, we put the lid over the hole, dropped down the hinged table, and dove into the food like a pack of wolves. By the time the dishes were cleared and cleaned and the first landlines were baited and lowered into the lake, it was almost midnight. Whether by beginner’s luck or as a reward for patience above and beyond, Dad got the first smelt, which we promptly confiscated and filleted and chunked into pieces of fresh bait.

Once the fresh chunks of bait hit the water, our action was steady for the next few hours, interrupted only twice when one large cusk and a very feisty 3-pound salmon turned our lines into a rat’s nest. We actually had to trash three handlines because they were so tangled and build new ones. Ken was the first to notice dawn’s gray light filter through the windows and then we all realized the wind wasn’t howling anymore. Smelt jigging really picked up as a new day got under way. Sometimes we brought up two at a time and somewhere around 6 a.m. we filled our second gallon can with smelt. Five cusk were “on ice” outside the door and two salmon and a trout had been released.

Figuring we had plenty of smelt for friends and neighbors, as well as our own freezers, we called it a night and coiled and stored our lines. Then came what I thought was the best part of the trip. Ken cleaned a dozen or so smelt, dredged them in cornmeal and seasonings, and fried them up right in the shanty. A loaf of homemade oatmeal bread, home fries, and fresh coffee rounded out the feast.

It had been a long but rewarding outing, despite weather and fuel difficulties, when we finally pulled into the garage about 8 a.m. We were all dragging and road weary, but it all passed in a flash when Dad spoke up to say, “We might as well start the New Year off right and go back down next weekend, boys.” That really was the best part of the smelting excursion, and Dad and I shared many more great times in one smelt shanty or another over his remaining years. But I never did convince him to set one single tip-up outside.

Outdoor feature writer Bill Graves can be reached via e-mail at bgravesoutdoors@ainop.com