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Smelting or Melting in Maine

February 10, 2010 - BELGRADE - Smelt camp operators on the Kennebec River are suffering, they say, because of over-hyped concerns about thin ice and several recent reports of snowmobiles and pickup trucks plunging into frozen lakes.

Sonny Newton, who operates a smelt camp in Dresden, said stories like these have scared people off.

A pickup truck fell through North Pond in Rome this week. On Friday, a mother and son snowmobiling on Messalonskee Lake in Oakland hit open water and were daringly rescued. And a snowmobiler who went into Embden Pond on Sunday was pulled out and treated for hypothermia.

Authorities throughout New England have been warning about thin ice on lakes and ponds, telling snowmobile operators that there's no such thing as safe ice.

But Newton said the ice in front of his camp is almost 2 feet thick. The Maine Warden Service says 12 to 15 inches of ice will likely hold a medium-sized truck while 5 inches allows for ice fishing and snowmobile or ATV travel.

"People aren't calling," Newton said Tuesday. "It's dead down here. They're afraid of the ice. They're reading, 'Don't go out on the ice,' and the idiots walking around on the ice jam doesn't help.

"Snowmobiles and trucks going through the ice, stuff like that hurts. We know what we got for ice out here. We know all the time what we got. People are just scared."

If fewer Maine residents and tourists take to the state's lakes this ice fishing season, the economic consequences would be felt.

In 2006, 131,000 anglers traveled to Maine from outside the state, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. The survey did not distinguish between ice fishing and other types of angling.

The out-of-town anglers spent, on average, $952 on equipment, lodging, food and other costs while in Maine. The total economic impact was nearly $125 million, according to the survey.

Anglers from Maine -- approximately 351,000 of them -- spent more than $132 million on fishing-related expenses in 2006, an average of $604 per angler.

Newton said all camps south of the Pearl Harbor Remembrance Bridge are now open.

Ice on lakes and ponds can be more treacherous than ice on the river because of spring holes, inlets or outlets, where ice tends to be thinner, he added.

"They're riding out on places they don't know," he said of snowmobilers. "They're going over these spring holes. On the river, we don't have those, especially down this far.

"I wouldn't be driving out there with my vehicles, and I wouldn't let people out if it wasn't safe."

Verna Damon, who operates Baker's Smelt Camp in Pittston with Mike Baker, said she gets a lot of calls from people asking if the ice is safe.

"The TV's got them all messed up," Damon said. "Everybody's scared. Ice is different on the river. We're open for business. The ice is good. It's safe."

Dan Kilmer of Webb's Store smelt camp rentals in Randolph said his business hasn't picked up as fast as he would have liked.

"People are leery of the ice and the ice jam, they're really concerned," Kilmer said. "One of the first questions they ask when they call is, 'How much ice is there out there?' There's 2 feet of ice out there."

Kilmer said some believe the Kennebec River is no longer frozen because of the ice cutters.

The cutters stayed within the channel, and most of the smelt camps are on eddies -- places in the river where the water moves in a different direction or speed than the main current. Eddies are made by rocks, outcroppings along the side, behind logs and on the inside of bends.

"They assume we lost all our ice," he said. "All (the cutters) did was cut a hole and then turned around and left. There's already a foot of ice back where they went through. It's buttoned right up."

Worthing's Smelt Camp Rentals in Randolph, which is north of the Randolph-Gardiner bridge, is the only smelt camp that hasn't been able to put shacks back out on the ice.

The ice jam above Worthing's has diverted the channel to flow right in front of the camp; the water has been moving too fast to refreeze.

Mechele Cooper, Kennebec Journal, February 10, 2010

Lakes: Messalonskee Lake
Regions: Belgrade


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