New England fishers are on thin ice this winter as warming temperatures force them to abandon their lake perches months ahead of schedule, an alarming reality that could jeopardize the future of a deeply rooted recreational tradition.
Ice fishing is a way of life in places like New Hampshire, where people flock to frozen lakes each winter with their bob-houses in tow.
These little houses – diminutive, hand-built wooden shanties mounted on sled gliders so they can be pulled into the middle of frozen lakes – have long offered protection from the freezing northern winds. In recent years they have become ever more elaborate, with holes built into their floors for hauling in fish, along with heaters, solar panels, lights and even TVs.
But ice fishers are increasingly finding themselves stuck on the lakeside after being forced to abandon their efforts unseasonably early.
On a recent Tuesday in late February, with midwinter temperatures pushing into the balmy 50s, fishers on New Hampshire’s Lake Winnepocket were scrambling to pull their bob-houses off the rapidly melting ice.
Johnny Cutter and Ethan O’Neil rushed to slide their ice shanties off the lake with winches and tractor-like all terrain vehicles, before it got warm enough for them to fall through the ice.
“Global warming is real,” said Cutter, wading through puddles in his ice cleats. “I never thought it was, but it is.”
O’Neil, who was working to hoist his little house on to some rounded logs so he could roll it on to planks lined up on the lakeshore, agreed. “Tell everybody in the lower states to stop using their air conditioners, so we’ll have winter up here.”
According to Stephen Baron, a meteorologist with the nearest National Weather Service station, in Gray, Maine, temperatures never dropped below 0F (-18C) in the area around Concord, New Hampshire, this winter – a phenomenon that has not occurred since the winter of 1952-53.
“As of right now, the average temperature is only one-tenth of a degree off of it being the warmest winter ever on record,” he said, adding that those Concord records go all the way back to 1869.
Cutter has been ice fishing on nearby lakes in New Hampshire since his youth, when his stepdad brought him out on the ice with a pup tent and a portable heater brand-named “Mr Buddy”.
“The houses then weren’t as glamorous as the ones we have now,” he said. “Mine has a 300-watt solar panel on the top. It runs all my electrical and my TV. I even have a disco ball.”
In recent years, the bob-houses have had to be pulled from the lakes far earlier than the state-mandated deadline of 1 April. Cutter said this year some of the local fishing derbies had been canceled because of the perilously thin ice. And, with a late start to winter and an early melt, his house was only on the ice for 20 days.
The heating ice can create dangerous conditions for the fishers. In other parts of the country, several people have fallen in, sometimes fatally. In recent years, authorities have had to haul Jeeps and ATVs out of melting lakes.
“I had to help pull out a bob-house out that fell in three years ago,” said Cutter, adding that a friend had built that house with a glass roof, which ended up turning it into a heating greenhouse that melted a hole in the ice beneath it.
“It was floating,” he said. “That’s the reason they call it a bob-house, because it was literally bobbing.” (It’s one of several theories put forward to explain the name; others have suggested it’s related to the bobbing of a fishing line.)
Last Tuesday, despite the brilliant sun, Cutter estimated that the ice on Lake Winnepocket was still 10in thick and safe to walk on – at least until the warm rains forecast for that evening came in.
Cutter looked across the ice and saw an orange flag rise up on one of the wooden ice fishing traps he had set a few hundred feet across the lake. The traps are rigged with “tip-ups”, simple mechanisms that cause a flag to raise when a fish pulls on a line dangling through the ice hole into the water.
Cutter jumped on his ATV and powered across the ice to pull the line up. He started whooping with joy when he pulled in a hefty, large-mouthed bass, which he estimated weighed at least 5lb.
He posed for a picture, then quickly released the bass back into the hole, which he said was “best for the lake”.
“It’s just great being out here,” he said. “This is a huge hobby for us. And we’re losing the opportunities to do it.”