Fishing from my imagination

Dear reader,

     This weekend my dad did the unthinkable, he went fishing with out me. This was not a shock to me because he has done this before. The first time he did this was ice fishing which is the best thing ever. For all those who don't know what it is. It is the sport of going out fishing in winter, 32 degrees and bellow normally colder, and trying to catch fish. Another name my friend Reed calls it is "Go to the lake and freeze your A** off". Most of the time he is not wrong but if you hit the just right then you can get lots of fish. The best time to go is as soon as the ice comes in. The ice will be hard enough for you to be out their but it won't take a block of dynamite to get a hole to fish from. The worst time is dead winter, for one thing it is way too cold and the second is that the fish will be laughing at you under the ice because they don't want to leave the warmer water. My dad went on a ice fishing trip with the "guys", aka the old men. They went to Alagash Lake, which I will explain later. They did little fishing and lots of drinking because that is what the old guys do when they're is no fishing. Aligash is a lake in the protected waterway that is called Aligash. The waterway is made up of Alagash, spider,eagle,small fish, large fish, beaver, and round ponds. Each one has their own advantages and difficulties. Spider is hard because it is a long pond that has no coves. This means that you will look like that guy from lilo and stitch who was beyond normally sun burnt except this will be from windburn. The advantage is that the fishing is crazy good. Then the other end of the scale you have Aligash which you can't have anything that has a motor, which includes but is not limited too; motorized ice augurs, snowmobiles, wheelers, and trucks. This suck because from our cabin on spider its a 15 minute ride by truck and a 5 minutes ride in from where the truck can't go any further. But you can't bring them on the ice, so you have to drag all the gear that was hooked up to the snowmobiles on to the ice for at least a 100 yards to the best spots to fish. Then you have to either use the hand auger or a ice pick. Which on Alagash is never fun because the ice is never less than 18 inches thick. To get around this we make a small hold and add a log dosed in gas and light it, basically a homemade bomb. The limited space in the hole and the gas makes a fun trick. YES, this is dangerous but never no fun. The hole never goes all the way through so you can still make the hole to your own size.

    To get back to what I started this about, my dad went to The Horns Pond this weekend and fished up there. He planned this for the both of us but I had other plans that I couldn't cancel. He just had to brag when he was fishing because he sent me pics of the fish he was catching and their were 10 inches at the smallest and at least 18 at the biggest. He sent me 10 pictures of different fish then he didn't for a while and then he said well the day is ever and the catch count is 103 fish between him and his buddy.

Dried Pond

Dried Pond

The previously mentioned pond, Hobbs pond, is as of now dried up almost all the way. There is now almost no space for the fish to swim. The channel of the pond, which is relatively deep when it was full of water, is now only 6 inches deep and the river that leads to the damn at one end is no longer deep enough to get a kayak through. The dam is small about 30 feet long and 12 feet high. Normally you wouldn't be able to cross it because the dam dips a foot and the water runs over that area. The last time I was there I could climb down the side and look through the drains in the dam. The fishing along with the water level below the dam seem to not be effected. Then again I have had little luck below the dam fishing anyways.