HARTFORD – Scotty Kilbreth of Canton stood in water pooled atop a foot of ice Saturday afternoon, looking at a smattering of ice-fishing shacks on Lake Anasagunticook.
“Unreal, unreal,” he said of the day’s temperature in the 50s and a widening expanse of open water at the west end of the lake.
“It’s been a funky winter. The ice is open now more than it ever is this time of year. Usually, this is all snow covered,” Kilbreth added.
Wet, warm and windy weather have combined to create some unusual conditions, including total open water, on some area lakes.
Fisheries biologist Jim Pellerin in Gray blamed winds late Friday afternoon for causing open water on Lake Auburn, Thompson and Kezar lakes.
“Normally, they’d be iced over now, but the wind is a contributing factor on the back of the front side of these storms,” he said.
“It keeps the ice from setting up,” Pellerin added.
Rain eats away the top surface of lake ice while wind separates it from shorelines.
“Water temperature right now is just about as low as it can be for ice to form. It just needs a little nudge and several days of calm,” according to Maine fisheries biologist Dave Boucher in Strong.
“Lakes in the greater Farmington area had a foot of ice before we got the rain,” Boucher said.
An inch of rain that hit Little Ossipee Pond in Waterboro recently ate up 3 to 4 inches of ice, Pellerin said. Since then, only an inch or two has reformed.
“It’s been a very strange year,” he said.
Kilbreth said the west end of Lake Anasagunticook is usually open in January at its confluence with Sparrow Brook, but the open water typically hugs the shoreline rather than expanding toward the middle of the lake.
Fishermen barely escape disaster
Earlier this week in a rainstorm, a group of anglers walking behind another on an all-terrain vehicle learned the hard way just how far the open water and thinning ice extended, Kilbreth said.
“They said they could see the opening at the mouth getting bigger and bigger, but they didn’t go out far enough around it and lost all their fishing gear,” he said.
The ATV broke through the ice and started to sink, but the driver gunned the engine and got out. The basket of gear it was towing, however, sank. Anglers walking behind the sled fell into the icy water as large sections of ice parted, Kilbreth said, but one of their buddies threw them a rope and got them out.
On Saturday morning, they were back to look for their lost gear. He said he helped them drill holes in the ice, but they didn’t find their equipment.
“Usually the ice is thick enough so that you can walk right up to the open water,” but not this year, Kilbreth said.
By midafternoon, mirage-like heat waves shimmered in the distance over large pools of standing rainwater that reflected cumulus clouds from a rapidly approaching cold front bringing more wind and rain.
“We just need a good week of cold weather with no wind. Five to 6 inches of ice can build quick,” Pellerin said.
Looking skyward again, Kilbreth, a New Page employee who has been ice fishing for 25 years in Maine, worried about the incoming storm and temperatures predicted to nosedive into single digits overnight.
“The water on the ice will freeze over tonight. This is not good. It creates a false ice,” he added.
Comments are no longer available on this story