Western Mountains Fishing Report: January 26, 2007

The ice fishing season in western Maine is a good two weeks behind schedule in terms of ice formation. Anglers are finally getting onto the ice in numbers, “rimming it” as Dave Howatt says, meaning that they’re fishing around the edges of the lakes where the ice is thickest. This method of fishing is productive for most species, but togue, which live in the deeper water, are less vulnerable this year. Ice thickness approaches a foot in the protected coves but thins to two inches or less over the deepest water. Anglers now also need to watch out for slush, and there are still some open spots on the deep lakes, as evidenced by rising mist on cold mornings. Our new kid-fishing waters that open to ice fishing – Toothaker Pond and Tibbetts Pond – are attracting young anglers who are pulling some nice big stocked brook trout though the ice.

Although we have more lakes open to ice fishing than we can check in a single year, we have fewer than most other regions of the state because the Rangeleys are closed to ice fishing. Accordingly, both Dave Boucher and Dave Howatt have traveled north for a weekend each to help check anglers on Big Eagle Lake. They enjoy the change in scenery and provide much-appreciated help to the biologists in northern Maine. Dave Boucher, who returned from Big Eagle on January 21, reports good fishing for trout but the usual problems with thin ice and slush.

There will be a milestone of sorts at Rangeley Lake in 2007 in that it will be the first time since 1962 that the lake will not be stocked. The suspension of stocking is a temporary measure, imposed because salmon growth rates have been declining somewhat for several years despite reductions in the stocking rate. We stocked 3,000 salmon as recently as 2001 but have gradually decreased the number to 1,500 in 2006. Yet, numbers of smelt continue to decline. The reason, it seems, is the increasing contribution of wild fish being hatched out in the lake’s tributaries. Because of the one salmon limit and the high voluntary release rate of mature fish, spawning has increased and the composition of the salmon population is slowly changing from hatchery to wild fish. We’ve also been stocking a relatively small number of brook trout – we’ll suspend this stocking for a year also given that large brookies also eat smelt and because we’re beginning to see some wild brook trout in the fishery. The goal, of course, is to temporarily reduce the number of hungry mouths so that the smelt population can rebound to its former abundance.