Ice fishing late getting started

BY JIM BROWN

FOR THE SOU’WESTER

Transcontinental Media/The Journal Pioneer

SUMMERSIDE, P.E.I. – Gordon Wood and his brother Garth just moved their shack onto the ice off Glover Shore Road Wednesday, Jan. 7.

They soon discovered they weren’t alone.

More than a dozen other smelt shacks were already there. “We’re ready,” said Gordon.

The pair brought a small slab of vinyl siding to place at the bottom of a freshly-cut hole in the ice. “The fish show up better,” said Garth, peering into the crystal clear water.

What bait do they use to draw schools of the silvery fish within reach of their spears? A lure at the end of a jigging line, oatmeal, barley and bits of mackerel, and even potatoes. “We just cook the potatoes and break them up into little pieces and they (flutter) to the bottom,” said Garth.

Another pair of fishers who had arrived hours earlier were filling their bucket. “We got about two dozen,” said Art Noonan.

Another fisher Cecil Banks wanted to move a shack onto the ice here earlier in the week, but he’s decided to wait. “The weather’s not good, but it will be mild Thursday,” said the Summerside fisher. Banks and many other recreational smelt fishers got a later start this year.

The weather has been bitterly cold at times, especially during a fierce New Year’s Day blizzard that blanketed P.E.I., but only recently has the ice thickened up.

Last year many smelt fishers and their colourful shacks were on the ice by the Christmas holidays.

Banks, who has been spearing smelt for the past 10 years, said he had good luck last year, largely because commercial fishers didn’t set any nets around the shack.

Recreational fishers are allowed to catch 60 smelt a day. The season opened Dec. 1 and closes April 2, or earlier, if the ice doesn’t hold up. In any given year there are 200 to 250 shacks clinging to ice-covered shorelines around the Island, said Bobby MacInnis, area chief of conservation and protection for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Charlottetown.

Each shack must be properly identified, with the owner’s name and address posted, he said.

That helps officers find owners in the event the shack is abandoned and falls through the ice, creating a safety and pollution problem, said MacInnis.