Smeltaplooza – Page 2 – Monsters Of Fishing

The Monsters Of Fishing annual tradition of Smeltapolooza is on, and the first and often most complicated step, is complete. That is, clearing a weekend that works for everyone. For the second year in a row the Monsters Of Fishing have managed to clear the same weekend for the overnight assault. This will again be……..Valentines Day weekend! Yes we all have spouses or significant other’s but, we are talking about Smeltapolooza here! Now it’s just a matter of tying up some details. Renting the shacks, hotel rooms, taxi van from hotel to river and back (no operating heavy equipment on this outing), food selection, beverage stockpiling. There is no fishing equipment to bring with smelting. The lines are strung up in your shack, and bloodworms for bait are available there. This means valuable space and weight that might normally be taken up by fishing gear, is now available for important life support equipment like, larger coolers, and propane stoves for cooking various meat items (vegetables are strictly prohibited), footballs, and that inflatable doll someone always sneaks in……

We go up along some tributaries that run into the Kennebec River around Bowdoinham, Maine. There are a bunch of shack operations with names like River Bend, Sonny’s, Chubby Leighton’s, Jim’s….etc. We do Jim’s most years for some reason. Most smelting “Camps” are a row or two of shacks, ranging from a few to 20 or 30 of them, along the frozen edge of the rivers. Little villages if you will, wired with electricity for a couple of light bulbs in each shack, and some bulbs spaced outside to see where you’re walking. You can fit 3, 4, maybe five people in a shack all depending on its size. There is a small woodstove and wood provided in each shack and it is possible to get it roasting hot inside, even if it’s zero outside. A few beat up metal folding chairs round out the furnishings….and that’s it. Two “race holes” have been cut inside the shack, one on either side. They are actually a rectangular slot about 16” or so wide that runs the length of the side of the shack. A board is hung from the ceiling over the race holes on both sides by bungee cords, and 15 or so lines with sinkers and hooks are wrapped up on each board waiting to be unwrapped, baited, and lowered into the hole. Bloodworms are cut into pieces and hooked on. At some point the lines might start moving. That’s when you yank the little smelt up. You fish for a 6 hour tide—either the incoming or outgoing.

Sometimes they say you can fill a five gallon bucket in a couple hours—-then sometimes the only time a line moves is when you take a stick, and while Dean is sitting, staring solemnly down at the still and quiet race hole, you slowly, and without detection, reach up and over his head and jiggle a line with your stick. Sometimes it’s like he got hit with an electric shock of some kind and he starts grabbing at lines and hauling them up, all yelling and stuff, only to find them empty of course. The number of times he can be suckered with this seems to be directly proportional to the number of empties in his corner. Trying to not bust out laughing is the hard part—especially when he gets suckered in for the eight or ninth time in a row…… I mean, come on!…..

More updates to follow as Smeltapolooza 2010 takes off.

Tasty Too!!

Every winter some of us Monsters tackle the grueling expedition we’ve come to call Smeltapolooza. The idea is to cram as many of us as possible into a small shack along the banks of a frozen river, along with enough food and beverages to survive for five or six hours, and attempt to pull 4-6 inch little fish through the ice. Now, this involves a keen understanding of tide times, moon sets, water temperatures and bait depths, which probobly explains why we tend to catch very little, but then, who really wants to catch the hundred or more of these little things it would take to make a decent meal for the whole bunch. So,…Smeltapolooza lessons learned?…bring lots of food, and a pain reliever of your choice to supplement breakfast at the hotel the next morning.