Ice stories and statistics
By V. Paul Reynolds
Whether we fish or not, this time of the year most of us fortunate enough to live on a lake year round keep at least one eye on the wondrous natural cycle we call “ice out.”
Today at Branch Lake, where I make my home, ice out has begun its somewhat predictable iterations. Near the warming shore side rocks there are ribbons of open water. Out on the lake, the color is changing from light blue to a lead gray. Listen closely and you can hear the ice shifting like a tectonic plate. A crack, and then a soft moan, as if to signal an aging pang and an impending change.
I, like my late father who loved this lake, enjoy the ice-out wagering game: “Ice will be out of Branch by end of the first week in April. Bet me five bucks?” he would challenge with a big grin. He rarely lost his bet. Last year ice out at Branch Lake fell on April 12. In 2021, ice out was April 1. Over the past decade the typical ice-out range at Branch Lake was April 10-25.
Just for the record, the lake ice, when it is broken up by wind and temperature changes, does not sink. As the air warms, the ice thins from the top and the bottom. This is called honeycombing. Watching the actual clearing of the lake from its icy blanket is a thing to behold. Without fail, the day after ice out is followed by men in snowmobile suits maneuvering their trolling boats close to shore hoping to hookup with a hungry salmon invariably on a Gray Ghost tandem streamer fly.
North of here, Moosehead Lake is always the focal point in the springtime ice out prognostications. Last year the big lake lost its ice sheet on April 29. Ten years ago, ice on Moosehead held on until May 7. Ice out dates for Moosehead go back to 1848. Climate studies show that Maine lake ice out dates — Moosehead included — have shifted over the years to about on average nine days earlier over a 150-year span. The old normal was ice out about May 5-10; the new normal is ice out between April 20-30.
The coolest ice I ever have seen was an iceberg floating near a harbor off the West coast of Newfoundland. My late wife Diane and I hired a guide who took us to the looming iceberg in a freshly painted mustard yellow dory. Alongside the behemoth iceberg, the guide chopped off a couple of ice chunks and put them in our camping cooler.
We learned that these fresh water icebergs can be 5,000 to 100,000 years old. Some may be as old as a million years! Ice from an iceberg is quite a bit more dense than the bagged ice cubes you buy at the local store for your camping trip. Yes, as ice cubes in your drink, they hang on and on.
That night back at the Provincial campground my neighbor saw me chopping from this big chunk of very blue ice beside my cooler. “What are you doing?” he inquired.
Well, I said with a haughty air, “ I am about to pour 10-year old whiskey over 10,000 year old ice cubes. Would you care for one?”
The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide and host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network. He has authored three books. Online purchase information is available at www.sportingjournal.com, Outdoor Books.