Brave Little State is Vermont Public’s listener-powered journalism podcast. Every episode begins with a question. Today, David Ehrich of North Hero wants to know:
“How do ice fishermen know when the ice is thick enough to go out on?”
Note: Our show is made for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript below. Transcripts are generated using a combination of robots and human transcribers, and they may contain errors.
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A reason for the season
Sabine Poux: Ice fishing is a reason to be outside during a season when you really need a reason to be outside. It’s an antidote to going stir crazy, getting cabin fever or falling into a winter depression. For some, it’s time to be completely alone.
And, crucially, it’s a way to embrace the ice that becomes unavoidable in the winter, instead of hiding out and waiting for it to pass. And perhaps nowhere else in Vermont is ice less avoidable than on the Champlain Islands.
One of those islands is North Hero, where about 900 full-time residents follow stark seasonal rhythms. During summers, the island overflows with tourists before emptying out into slow, brooding winters.
And as that pendulum of extremes swings, the physical landscape around North Hero also changes. During particularly cold winters, like the one we’re having now, the ice that forms on Lake Champlain makes it so that the island isn’t so much of an island anymore. The lake becomes this extra ground on which to walk the dog, to go ice skating — and, for the really brave, it’s a road. Head to the shore on a winter day and you’ll see ice fishermen driving their trucks out on the lake, in pursuit of perch or pike.
Here in North Hero, it seems like most people have, at one point or another, been an ice fisherman, even if they don’t fish anymore. Like Laura Jacoby, who runs a sweater studio in town.
Laura Jacoby: We would go out with my grandfather and, you know, you had a little shanty and everything. Some people had little wood stoves in there and everything. And my grandfather would fall asleep. And so, a big joke — we would just tug on his line, you know, and he'd be like, “Uhh!”
Sabine Poux: Next door, it’s breakfast time at Hero’s Welcome, the post-office-slash-general-store that’s the centerpiece of town. Visiting fishermen trickle in alongside locals to buy egg sandwiches and hand warmers.
And they pick up beer next door at Kraemer and Kin, the island’s brewery.
Heather Kraemer: I’ve had the pleasure to meet a couple different ice fishing groups coming through.
Sabine Poux: Owner Heather Kraemer says beer and fishing go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Heather Kraemer: There was a father-son yesterday evening, and then there's been a bunch of different troops of friends going out. And they often stock up on some beers and then enjoy a couple libations while they're here in preparation the night before. So really, the commitment to the craft starts early.
Sabine Poux: Here, in this place enclosed in ice, this is how you survive winter. You lean in and you live with the ice.
But that comes more naturally for some than others.
David Ehrich: Well, when I moved to North Hero about 20 years ago, I was struck by how in the wintertime, people would go out on the ice and go fishing. And to me, coming from New York City, this was unthinkable. (Laughter)
Sabine Poux: This is David Ehrich. He’s our question-asker. And we’re sitting in his Subaru at a boat launch just outside of town.
Even though David has lived on this island for two decades, he feels like he’s still earning his stripes. Understanding ice fishing, for him, is a part of that.
David Ehrich: And so, my question was, you know, as somebody who's, like, learning how to live in Vermont, how do they know when it's safe to go out on the ice, and how do they know when they have to stop?
Sabine Poux: Are you curious at all because you think this is something you’d ever want to try?
David Ehrich: I can't imagine going ice fishing. I mean, I love the ice, right? And it's incredibly beautiful. And the lake freezes over where I am, and it's really wonderful to go walking out on the ice. I regularly go snowshoeing on the ice, and my favorite time to go snowshoeing on the ice is at night when there's a full moon.
Sabine Poux: But you would never drive a truck onto the ice?
David Ehrich: Drive a truck?! (Laughter) Drive anything. You know? I mean, it’s unbelievable!
Sabine Poux: From the parking lot, David and I can see a row of trucks about a quarter-mile out. And ice shanties, with chimneys coming out of the roofs. It’s like a little village on the ice.
David Ehrich: People tell me that some of them have, like, generators and heaters. You know. They have Wi-Fi and television.
Sabine Poux: What would you put in your shanty?
David Ehrich: I don’t think I’d have a shanty.
Sabine Poux: You would just be braving it on a bucket?
David Ehrich: If I, if I were going to do it, I would be out on a day nice enough to sit on a bucket. (Laughter)
Sabine Poux: That’s right.
David Ehrich: If I needed a shanty, I wouldn't be out there.
Sabine Poux: That's a good point. That’s a really good point.
Sabine Poux: He wouldn’t be out there, he says. And yet, on one of the coldest days of the year so far, David is about to go fishing.
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Buckets, tip-ups and everything in between
Sabine Poux: Alright.
David Ehrich: You ready?
Sabine Poux: David and I step out from the comfort of the heated car and head toward the lake, where dozens of sled and tire tracks branch through crunchy snow in all manner of directions.
Sabine Poux: (Crunching snow) Wow. Hopefully someone in this group of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine fisher-groups will talk to us?
Sabine Poux: In the winter — at least in really cold winters, like this one — walking onto the lake is almost like walking out onto the moon. Or into the desert, maybe. The wind creates new topographies of bare ice and blowing snow drifts. The sky is so big and so blue above. It’s almost dizzying.
We first encounter Gary, a fisherman from across the lake in New York, who says he’s been out here every weekend since Christmas.
Gary: I come out when there's, like, three, four inches. I don’t know. I check it. I’ve been doing this, I don’t know, since I’ve been about eight, nine years old. So I’ve been coming over here. So I kind of know it. I hope to know it, you know.
But you never know. So it's the chance you take, right? Every time you come out, you never know.
Sabine Poux: Gary’s sitting on a bucket with just one glove on. His fishing hand’s exposed to the elements.
Gary: I don’t— never get cold.
Sabine Poux: You never get cold?
Gary: No, no. This is what I live for. I just like to fish, peace and quiet, relax, enjoy myself.
Sabine Poux: What do you tend to think about when you're out here?
Gary: Just fishing. You're not gonna put me on TV, are you?
Sabine Poux: A lot of ice fishermen, I’ve learned, would rather just be left alone.
But Gary is out here with a friend: his buddy, Mark.
Gary: We’re 57 years old. We've been neighbors all our life, and that's all we do, is fish and hunt. Work, fish and hunt.
We got out here at 8, and we'll probably fish until 4:30, 5 o'clock
Sabine Poux: Wow. What do you bring for lunch?
Gary: Nothing
Sabine Poux: Nothing?
Gary: No.
Sabine Poux: You don't eat out here?
Gary: Uh-uh. Not while I'm fishing.
Sabine Poux: So you're pretty dialed in.
Gary: I like to be, yeah.
Sabine Poux: Sorry, we’re disrupting your—
Gary: It's all right. I mean … (Laughter)
Sabine Poux: It’s alright, he says, as he gets up and walks away.
A few dozen yards over, there’s a scene playing out with an entirely different energy.
David Ehrich: There’s a whole party going on in there.
Sabine Poux: A guy rides a motorized sled around two big tents, one of which spews smoke out of a makeshift chimney.
Lee Hutchinson: Yeah, you want us to come out?
Sabine Poux: Yeah, or no, unless you have room in there.
Sabine Poux: Lee Hutchinson, of Burlington, unzips the shanty door and friends start streaming out, like it’s a clown car. Some of them aren’t even wearing jackets — like Matt Hutchinson, of Fletcher, who’s just in a hoodie.
Matt Hutchinson: We had to keep on opening the doors and the windows.
David Ehrich: ’Cause it’s too hot in there?
Matt Hutchinson: Too hot.
Sabine Poux: This is a pretty luxe set up. There’s a wood stove, a grill and even a bathroom. Cider is warming up on a stove.
Josh Lucke: We’ve been planning for a month, at least.
Sabine Poux: And all around the tent in every direction are tip-ups — an automatic fishing device that gets planted into fishing holes. It has a reel and a hook on the low end, and a spring-activated flag on the other. When a fish is hooked, the flag pops into the air. You know. So fishermen don’t have to put down their beers to catch fish.
Matt Hutchinson: Sometimes, if you got, like, a friend over there, you can, from over there, you can still, like, check your tip-ups, and you can go say hi to those people, and go say hi to those people.
Sabine Poux: They’re not the only ones fishing this way. We leave this bay and drive over to the other side of the lake, where there’s a group of anglers out in front of the Lake View Lodge.
Grateful Dead plays from a speaker and a bottle of Jaigermeister stays cool in a snow bank.
Tim Plourde: That's the last of what we’ve got left. (Laughter)
Sabine Poux: Tim Plourde and his family are visiting for the weekend from Massachusetts, and staying at the lodge.
And I have to say, their shanty set-up blows the other out of the water.
David Ehrich: I see you’ve got a double-wide here.
Tim Plourde: Yeah. The double one’s giant. That's like an eight-person, and these are like two- or three-persons, and we got tables and grills and all kinds of good stuff.
Sabine Poux: For the men in this family, this is the annual family reunion. Tim says they left their sisters and wives and girlfriends at home.
Tim Plourde: It’s too cold. (Laughter) They don't want to come up. Plus, yeah, I mean, they leave us alone for the weekend and we come up and just kind of get away from it.
Sabine Poux: Do they worry about you guys out on the ice?
Tim Plourde: Oh, yeah. They call us, text all the time. They're always worried.
Sabine Poux: About you falling in?
Tim Plourde: (Laughter) Yeah, mostly.
David Ehrich: And what do they do while you’re up here?
Tim Plourde: Probably happy we’re gone for the weekend. (Laughter)
Sabine Poux: I have about one more stop in me before my fingers freeze.
David Ehrich: Carry Bay is this way …
Sabine Poux: David and I get back in the car and drive a few minutes over to a spot on the island’s east shore. We pull over and walk past a handful of empty summer cottages. Then we see two hunched figures sitting atop buckets several yards out onto the lake.
David Ehrich: Ahoy there!
Sabine Poux: These guys have found the middle ground between the fishermen we’ve met so far. Their set–ups are simple. But they do have a motorized auger, to drill holes through the ice.
(Drilling sound)
Sabine Poux: And they’re all bundled up against the cold.
Tim Corriveau: Heated gloves, battery operated. Heated socks, battery operated.
Sabine Poux: Tim Corriveau and his friend Jay Devino live in Colchester.
Sabine Poux: How would you describe him as a fishing buddy?
Jay Devino: (Laughter) He’s an idiot! No. He’s a good guy.
Sabine Poux: Jay grew up fishing in West Addison, by the Lake Champlain Bridge. And Tim runs a fishing Facebook group meant to get people out on the lake in the winter.
Sabine Poux: When you’re sitting at home wondering if you’re going to come out here …
Tim Corriveau: We actually have a rule for that. So, we're not the first ones on the ice. (Laughter) OK, that's the rule. So if, if we drive up here and we look out and there's ice, no one's out here, we go to the next place where there's actually people already on the ice.
Sabine Poux: You let other people test it for you.
Tim Corriveau: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m a working man. I’ve gotta work the next day. You know? The last thing I want to do is fall in.
I’ve never fallen through the ice in my entire life.
Sabine Poux: Knock on wood.
David Ehrich: That’s something to be proud of.
Sabine Poux: It’s a hard strategy to argue with. Don’t be the first one on the ice.
But somebody’s gotta be the first one, right? How do they know when it’s safe?
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Chief concerns
Sabine Poux: The town of North Hero’s tiny. And from a mile out on the lake, looking back at the shore, it appears even tinier.
Mike Murdock: Family farm is, is right, right there. It's not a farm anymore, but.
Sabine Poux: Mike Murdock is looking back at the town where he’s spent his whole life. And where he plans to spend the rest of it, too.
Mike Murdock: I'm not leaving. (Laughter)
Sabine Poux: Are you going to be buried here?
Mike Murdock: Oh yeah.
Sabine Poux: Do you have a plot picked out?
Mike Murdock: My mother, in her infinite wisdom, set us up with plots. So, local cemetery, with the rest of the fam.
Sabine Poux: Mike’s a fourth-generation islander. And his family’s stayed close. His sister runs an antique shop in town, in the building that used to be his grandfather’s bait shop.
That’s not far from the boat shop where Mike works. That job, and his gig as North Hero fire chief, usually keep him really busy.
But he’s got the month of February off work. Which means he has more time to come out here to fish.
Sabine Poux: How would you describe like, what everything like what the ice looks like today?.
Mike Murdock: Ah, well, with the sun, it's, it's bright, it's got some blue sky, a little bit of cloud cover. But, if you can't enjoy it, then you go somewhere warm. (Laughter) That's it. If you don’t like this, just go somewhere warm.
Sabine Poux: Mike knows this sort of climate isn’t for everyone. But it seems to suit him. And he’s got the right gear to make it work. He comes out here on this little truck that’s like a golf cart with big chunky tires.
Mike Murdock: I’ve had it for quite a while. Beats walking.
Sabine Poux: And he’s swaddled in a puffy camo float suit. It’s warm — and buoyant.
Mike Murdock: If you should go in, it at least gives you a fighting chance.
Sabine Poux: How thick is the ice right here?
Mike Murdock: Right here, we're, I don't know, like 14, 15 inches ice. So there's, there's, it's been a really good year for ice formation.
Sabine Poux: How do you know when it’s safe to drive your rig out onto the ice?
Well, everyone sort of starts out on foot.
Vermont Fish and Wildlife suggests waiting for three-and-a-half to four inches of ice for walking — or skating — and eight inches for a snowmobile or an ATV.
That’s if the ice is clear, by the way. Those guidelines double if the ice is white or opaque, the state says.
And for trucks, like question-asker David was wondering, the common wisdom is 12 inches. Mike recommends 16, though he won’t take out anything that’s heavier than his wheeler.
Mike Murdock: Some guys are a little braver than others. But typically, if there’s a foot or more, I’ll take my wheeler out.
Sabine Poux: Mike says it’s important to ask around for intel, and to check the ice as you drive.
Because under that crunchy layer of snow, it’s not uniform. Sometimes ice floes collide with each other and create pressure ridges, like tectonic plates forming mountains. At those points, there's the risk of open water.
Mike Murdock: Even a year like this year, where we’ve got extreme temperatures, you know, the ice can still be, you know, unpredictable.
Sabine Poux: And when the ice gets really unpredictable, and things go wrong, it’s Mike’s fire department that gets the call. As if on cue, a distant motor cuts through the stillness.
Mike Murdock: That’s our air boat, that you’re hearing. That’s our department’s air boat.
Sabine Poux: The air boat is for rescues. The department bought it a few years ago after they had to rescue a dog out on the ice, and had a hard time getting back to shore on foot.
And it’s like one of those Star Wars land cruisers, or a boat you’d see in the Everglades. Its propeller whirs in the back as it glides atop the ice.
Sabine Poux: Hi!
Sabine Poux: This morning, the boat’s not out for a rescue. It’s making a trail for an upcoming ice festival.
Chris Retz, one of Mike’s assistants at the fire department, hops out.
Chris Retz: People are out fishing right now. On the opposite side of all these islands, there's about four or five people fishing right now.
Sabine Poux: Mike and Chris say they haven’t done any ice rescues yet this year. The ice has been good, and besides, most accidents happen in late winter, when the ice is thawing.
Sabine Poux: How many rescues are you guys doing a year?
Mike Murdock: It varies year to year. A number of years ago, the ice conditions were terrible, and we had three fatalities, in what, four days?
Chris Retz: In three days, I think it was — Thursday was one, and then Saturday morning was the next two.
Sabine Poux: Were they people from here?
Mike Murdock: One, one was local. Two were from out of the area, but were, were die-hard ice fishermen, and very well known in the fishing community.
Sabine Poux: That’s horrible.
Mike Murdock: Yeah, it was pretty sad.
Sabine Poux: Have you guys gone in before?
Both: Yes.
Sabine Poux: Were you fishing?
Mike Murdock: Yes. It was late, late in the year, and the ice was just terrible. And I was much, I was much younger, and, you know, I went up to about my chest, and I scrambled and popped right out again. So.
Sabine Poux: Wow. That’s like, a haunting experience to have.
Mike Murdock: Ehh, makes you think. Well, of course, now I’m in a float suit. (Laughter)
(Boat engine sounds)
Sabine Poux: Chris hops back in the airboat. And it glides away, back out into the icy expanse.
Mike grabs a small fishing pole out of the back of his rig. He ties a lure.
Mike Murdock: Some guys call it a jig, but the Canadian fishermen that used to come down kind of schooled us on this thing and they’re called “bibbets.”
Sabine Poux: We lower the line into the hole and then jiggle it up and down.
Mike Murdock: It’s like playing with a cat.
Sabine Poux: And up and down and up and down.
Mike Murdock: Sometimes they like it moved a lot. Sometimes they don’t want it moved at all.
Fish have moods too. They can be temperamental, I’ll tell you that. (Laughter)
Sabine Poux: Temperamental indeed. The perch are slow to bite.
But the kind of ice fishing Mike does isn’t just about catching.
Mike Murdock: If you don’t stay active, you get the doldrums. The (grunts) you know, winter blues.
Sabine Poux: What happens in a winter when it’s bad ice? Do you get super depressed?
Mike Murdock: No, there’s always something to do. I mean, there’s always ice. Somewhere, there’s always ice.
Sabine Poux: What do you tend to think about out here?
Mike Murdock: Oh God. (Laughter) Anything that comes to mind. (pause) You know, some of life's problems are solved while we're fishing.
Sabine Poux: What’s, like, the last epiphany you had out on the ice?
Mike Murdock: Oh, God. I dare venture a guess.
Sabine Poux: What about being out here allows you the clarity to solve your problems?
Mike Murdock: I mean, look at it. (Laughter) There's no distractions. You know. It’s a beautiful day. I mean, how can you not just … In your mind, if you can't solve some of what's going on, then you better find something else to do, or somewhere else to do it.
Sabine Poux: Oh, do you have something?
Mike Murdock: Yeah!
Sabine Poux: Finally, Mike catches a fish.
Sabine Poux: You got a perch.
Mike Murdock: Yellow perch. Average size one.
Sabine Poux: It’s greenish yellow, with dark stripes and orange fins. After a few minutes, he catches two more. They flop around on the ground by his fishing hole.
Sabine Poux: That’s about the extent of the excitement. This peace of mind that comes from fishing, that draws Mike to the sport — it’s partly found in these pockets of stillness. Mike’s a deer hunter, and he says there’s a similar draw.
Mike Murdock: You just kinda, kinda soak it all in, while you're … (Reel sound) That one’s kind of small. We’ll let him go. (Laughter) Let him go to grow a little bigger.
Sabine Poux: That’s nice of you to give him a shot.
Mike Murdock: Yep. Everybody deserves a shot. (Laughter)
Sabine Poux: One more thing. A few weeks after fishing in North Hero, I got a message from David Ehrich, our question-asker. On one warm February day, this guy, who said he couldn’t imagine ice fishing, went ice fishing with a friend of a friend. And better yet, he caught something.
David Ehrich: It was just a wee, tiny little perch, and it was not much for eating. And as the rest of the school wasn’t biting, we ultimately threw it back in the fishing hole.
So how did it feel? Well, I guess I realized it wasn’t really about the fish per se or even fishing, as much as it was about being there in nature and making a new friend.
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Credits
This episode was reported and produced by Sabine Poux. Additional editing and production from the rest of the BLS team: Burgess Brown and Josh Crane. Angela Evancie is our executive producer. Ty Gibbons composed our theme music; other music from Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Kevin White and Andy Julow.
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