The 27th Annual Meredith Rotary Fishing Derby took place this past weekend.
Hundreds of fishermen found their spots on frozen lakes across the region.
They cut holes into the ice and dropped their lines, hoping to catch the biggest tagged rainbow trout and the grand prize of a brand new fishing boat.
NHPR Correspondent Sean Hurley went out across Meredith Bay on Saturday and Sunday to experience a day in the life of an ice fisherman.
He brings back this report.
Robert Davis (left) holds up his winning fish. (Sean Hurley, NHPR)
Sean: Oh this ice is just – not ice. It’s four to six inches of slush in places and then hopefully very solid ice below that. But when your foot slips down four inches in slush when you’re a half-mile from shore, you do panic a little. Any luck yet?
Paul: Nope. Not a bite.
Jim: Actually we’ve been looking around – we’re just like everyone else. There’s no flags going up. No tips up.
Paul: No. Who cares.
Jim: Exactly.
Paul: In a little while we’ll have a sandwich and a beer and that’s fishing.
Sean: That’s fishing…!
Sean: Ice fishing has this really primitive side where it’s just a hole in the ice with a line going down with a hook on the end and then there’s this other really pretty modern side where people are using all kinds of special technologies and even underwater cameras as Mark Turner described for me:
Mark Turner: Drill a hole and then drop a camera down. And you see everything. It is like – kind of like you’re fishing with the fish. They’re right there so it’s kind of cool.
Sean: Well I was lucky enough to just run into an ice fisher named Larry Cate who pointed me along to Charlie Coffin’s bobhouse. And charlie apparently has one of these underwater camera set-ups going and I’m hoping to go along and take a look at that.
Sean: Ok so I’m heading up now to Charlie’s bobhouse and hopefully we’ll get a peak 20,000 leagues – or maybe 20 feet under the ice.
Charlie Coffin: See it’s a camera. See I can watch my – you can watch your bait, see.
Sean: I see.
Charlie: I watched him come right in. He swam right around and I pulled it and missed him the first time, then he was looking around and I dropped it back down again and he went right at it and he’s like he’s trying to kill the thing and grabbing it like that and I pulled it and I got him.
Sean: So that’s the one you got?
Charlie: 24 inch laker, yeah. That was kind of fun, he was pretty heavy.
Sean: And you probably wouldn’t have been able to do that without the camera…
Charlie: No, no. See with the – I could see exactly what he was doing, and what I was doing. So it was fun. It makes it a lot more interesting.
Sean: It’s the end of Day One and I’m up near Derby Headquarters. I haven’t seen one fish or one flag go up. Um…But nobody seems to discouraged by that. Everyone seems to be having a pretty good time.
Sean: It’s Day 2 of the fishing derby and I’m about a ¼ mile from shore. It’s much lonelier out here today. We have a couple inches of fresh snow and it’s snowing once again. Pretty heavy snow. I see Charlie Coffin’s mobile bobhouse. I’m gonna go over and talk to him…Anybody home? Hi there!
Charlie: Hi!
Sean: How you doing? Can I come in?
Charlie: Come in, yeah, come in. Boy, is it nasty out there isn’t it?
Sean: It’s even worse than yesterday, it’s hard to believe.
Charlie: Oh boy.
Sean: Looks like you’re trying now.
Charlie: Yeah, I’m not doing too well. There’s nothing down there.
Sean: You haven’t caught anything?
Charlie: No.
Sean: Oh my gosh.
Charlie: With everybody putting food down there. What they do is they chum and they put too much stuff down…and then they eat that and they’re not hungry. They’re not gonna bite.
Sean: Probably the best and craziest and most lubricated description of ice fishing I heard all day came from the banjo playing ice fisherman, Chris Perley, who really put the whole thing in perspective.
Chris Perley: Well if all the sudden there was 1500 ham sandwiches hanging from the clouds in front of your face you’d think that something was up, right?
Sean: I don’t know if it’s the power of suggestion, but every since he said that I really have been looking up toward the sky and just wondering, what would I do - If suddenly there were 1500 ham sandwiches hanging from the clouds?
Jim Kelly (announcer): Alright, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and thanks for taking part of the 2008 Great Rotary Ice Fishing Derby…
Sean: Ok – it’s three o’clock and they just took the official scale down, very punctual. And now we’re just gonna wait until we hear the winning announcements.
Jim Kelly: And the winner of the 17 foot Starcraft boat with the motor and the trailer worth $23,250, Robert Davis from Claremont, New Hampshire. Congratulations!
(CHEERS)
(Chris Perley plays “Gracie Sue”)
