Too cold for fishing? Not for these ‘true Mainers’.
Image
Dan, left, and Deven Shay did not let the frigid conditions in Rockland, Maine, keep them from ice fishing.Credit...Polly Saltonstall
While health officials in Maine urged residents to stay inside as the wind howled and temperatures dropped into negative territory on Friday, Dan and Deven Shay were out ice-fishing on Chickawaukie Pond in Rockland.
They erected a canvas pop-up tent at 9:30 a.m., set out baited hooks in holes they drilled through the ice, then sat inside the tent, which was kept warm by a portable propane heater, and waited for the fish to bite.
For lunch, the Shay brothers cooked up moose steaks and deer sausage. Outside, the wind pushed swirls of snow around and occasionally tripped one of the flags marking their lures, tricking them into thinking they had caught something. By midafternoon they had caught four brook trout, which they planned to smoke, and one largemouth bass. They said they were not bothered by the cold, and neither were the fish. Except, Dan Shay noted, when a fish was too small to keep, he had to get it back in the water fast because “otherwise their eyeballs freeze.”
Deven Shay, 31, said none of the friends or relatives invited to accompany them accepted the offer. But that did not deter them.
“Everyone was telling us to stay inside, but we said, we’re going fishing,” he said. “We’re true Mainers.”
Deven Shay works at a fishermen’s wharf in Friendship, Maine, buying and selling lobsters. Dan Shay, 33, is a welder for a local contractor.
Neither brother was sure if they would go fishing again on Saturday. Dan Shay said he might go out in the woods, instead, and look for deer antlers — this is the time of year when they shed them.
