An annual rite of spring kicks off in the cold.
AUBURN – Phil Michaud plucked a wriggling, 3-inch fish from a bucket and grimaced.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the smelt, held delicately in his fingers. “I hate to hurt you little guys.”
Then he speared the fish’s body with a hook and cast it into the icy water of Lake Auburn. Perhaps this little fish would catch a bigger one.
“It doesn’t matter, really,” said Michaud, who has five children at home. “You sit and relax. That’s what fishing is about.”
Thursday marked the start of the state’s annual open water fishing season.
It’s a rite of spring for people who have spent the winter either ice fishing or cooped up inside, waiting for warm weather and an excuse to be outdoors.
This year’s season began without the warm weather. Area ponds and lakes, including fishing hub Lake Auburn, still have a layer of ice. Yet, more than 150 people parked along Lake Shore Drive in Auburn Thursday, dressed in hats and layers of clothes. They baited their hooks on new rods and reels and fished the sliver of open water between the land and the ice.
“The only thing I’m catching today is a cold,” said Michaud, who took the day off from work as a nurse’s aide.
“The one thing you can’t do when you’re fishing is wear gloves,” he said. He tugged at a tangled line and wrung his hands against the cold. “After 30 minutes or so, they go numb.”
All along the lake, people battled the cold and ice, which inspired some Rube Goldberg-like inventions.
John Couillard and Ron Trepanier, both of Greene, used lengths of half-inch conduit pipe to slide their line and baited hooks far into the lake, beneath the ice.
The pair began by linking together the pipes. Then, they stuck a one-liter Pepsi bottle on the end, with an elastic band around its middle.
By loosely stuffing a segment of the fishing line into the elastic band, they figured they could gently push the baited line as far as 60 feet away. And a little tug would free the line.
About 90 minutes after they arrived Thursday morning, Couillard and Trepanier had caught nothing with their contraption. However, a nearby fisherman traded two helpings of breakfast sausage for the chance to borrow it.
Some people did catch fish, though.
Dennis Perkins of Minot landed a three-and-a-half-pound togue, a green-gray fish that looked bigger than its weight.
It also had plenty of fight, said Perkins, who spent longer than expected to land the fish.
“After he got done wrapping himself in fishing lines around here, 20 minutes had gone by,” said Perkins.
His luck was the exception, though.
Lawrence Kilkenny of Lewiston and Steve Harrington of Hebron arrived at the lake one hour before midnight. Ten hours later, they had caught nothing.
“That’s OK,” said Kilkenny, who looked forward to open fishing all winter. “I’ll be back out tomorrow, whether I get anything or not. That’s the thrill of fishing.”
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