To hell with the fish, where's the beer?

Ice fishing: its an optimistic sport played out while people sit atop an inverted bucket, inside pop up shelters or the temporary winter home; the iconic ice shanty.  The ice shanty may be a green house, a chicken coop, a cool place to take shelter from the sun for some peace and quiet, or an eyesore abandoned and slumping in the furthest end of the yard during the summer, but during the winter they become a temporary home for the weekend. A pop up community of ice fishermen dotted over Maine’s lakes. Sebago Lake, Crystal Pond, Little Ossipee Pond, the Kennebec river, Eagle Lake, Sabbathday Pond, Megunticook Lake, Horne Pond, Damariscotta Lake, Sabattus Pond, Long Lake, Swan lake, Quantabacook Lake and Chickawaukie Pond are just a few that take on these temporary winter tenants. 

Ice fishermen - up in the negatives before dawn, carting out ice augers, woven baskets full of traps and sporting a uniform sponsored by Carhartt: thankful for the ice shanty and its wood stove to keep them warm (or dreaming of one). But the shanty is more than a warm refuge, its a place for a few of the boys to get together; for families and friends to catch up; to teach the next generation about how dad spent his winters in Maine with his dad; to get away from the phone and the tv (as long as there is a radio for the NASCAR races). 

Banged together in a couple of days from odds and ends from work which were going to the scrap heap or a hand-me-down from someone upgrading to fix their original ice shanty building mistakes: aluminum, plywood, plexiglass, foam board, fitted with bus seats, jigging holes, bunk beds, coal stoves, wood stoves; and on the outside, your name, a lock and a reflector. 

A place to slap up breakfast sandwiches dripping with bacon fat, to heat the chili in the Griswoldon top of the wood stove, a way to bribe the wife to get out on the ice, to dry the kids’ wet socks and mittens from the snow angels and help baiting traps, a meeting point for a few beers kept cold in the natural refrigerator that exists outside, perhaps a swig of Dr McGillicudy’s, a game of cards or just some place to sit outside of in a molded lawn chair and soak up the winter sun. 

The shanty takes on the persona of home. People improve, remodel, refit, let it disintegrate, decorate it with maps and flags and hanging cast iron frying pans and perhaps a pretty girl with a crate of beer. The essentials are always there, tomato sauce, salt, pepper, a radio, and the marks of the times they hit the jackpot and the days they went home skunked, not even a wind flag. 

Oh and the fish…its always better if you go home with some and a good story counts for more than a good fish, but that’s not the reason people are here. 

Ice fishing, it’s just a guise for people to spend time together.