by Gary Lee
There are no big weather events crossing the country currently…unless you count the blizzard that’s hitting the Iowa Caucuses tonight. That will leave a few people with no place to go—including the politicians.
It looks like we are in for some rain this week, but what else is new in the north country this winter?
At least the Pond Hockey Tournament came just under the wire as it warmed up just after the last game was over.
It was above freezing the next morning so they could get things cleaned up on the ice and in the parking lots.
There were certainly enough people around watching as the weather was nice and not much wind was blowing off the lake.
When I went down on Saturday night to take some pictures of the semi-final games there must have been over five hundred snowmobiles on the ice just outside the rinks and hundreds of people watching the games.
Also there was a new game I hadn’t seen before called Extreme Bubble Ball. I didn’t get the object of the game except to knock each other around inside the ball.
I guess there was a boundary and if you got knocked outside of it you were out of the game. But that never seemed to happen as they just got up and came back for more.
The hockey games were interesting to watch with lots of goals scored.
The puck was hot all of the time unless it went outside the rink, which it did a few times.
I never knew who was winning but someone must have been keeping score.
I didn’t stick around for the final game as I had been ice fishing all day and I needed some supper and a nap.
I got some nice pictures of play under the lights and some with The Woods Inn in the background of one rink.
The ice fishing was at Raquette Lake in the Mike Norris Memorial Fishing Tournament put on by the Raquette Lake Fish and Game Club.
It was a great day to be on the ice with very little wind, temperatures in the high twenties and the fish were biting.
I was the guest of Tom Beckingham at his heated ice shanty and all I had to do was show up and fish, which was great.
Fishing with Tom and I were his son Wayne, grandson Wyatt, a young friend Calvin Barkau-skas and Wayne’s friend Christopher Ebmeyer.
We had tip-ups spread all over the area we were in and flags started flying up not long after they were in the water.
I had two long runs on one tip-up that took out more than one hundred feet of line each time but dropped the minnow.
I knew it was a laketrout or a salmon as perch don’t run that far.
I had just put the tip-up back in the hole and I wasn’t more than twenty feet away when it went up a third time.
The fish hadn’t gone far this time. It was chomping on the bait; I could feel it as I held the line.
The fish started to make a run and I set the hook. I knew right away it was a nice fish as it put up a nice battle before getting up to the hole. It only went by the hole once and I pulled it out onto the ice.
Wayne was not far away on a snowmobile and said, “That’s a winner for sure.”
It was a nice lake trout and I didn’t have to measure to see if it was legal. Wayne took it down to have it weighed at the firehouse.
He came back and said the fish was on the score board at 26 inches and 6 and a quarter pounds. It held up for the remainder of the contest as the biggest laker of the day.
We had a lot more hits and caught several short laketrout but no more legal ones. I caught two more short ones and a nice perch that I weighed in.
The kids caught several small lakers and jigged a few holes but never did catch a perch.
We picked up at 3 p.m. and went to the firehouse for the awards, door prizes and 50/50 raffle.
For the day, there were 122 adults registered to fish, along with 16 kids.
All the kids got a door prize and several of the adults won things from tip-ups, ice augers to the best prize: a portable fishing shanty.
Awards were given for the top three fish in laketrout, perch and crappie for both kids and adults. No salmon were taken that day.
I did win the top prize for laketrout. I thank my guide Tom Beckingham for drilling the hole in the right place and for a great day of fishing.
It was nice to see all the kids out there fishing and that some won a prize. It sure put smiles on their faces.
Young Michael Lamphear won three prizes in the junior division and surely bought dad supper that night. It was a great day on hard water.
The great Backyard Bird Count is next weekend, February 12 through 15… but that’s another story. See ya.