This is not an ice fishing blog written by some hot-shot southern Mainer bemoaning the introduction of the northern pike to his precious puddle of mud somewhere in the Augusta- Lewiston-Portland greater mudpuddle lakes region of the state. We are not professional fishermen, except for Bob, who might have been once, but nobody is really quite sure yet. We also can't figure out if he's Italian, Portuguese or mutt. Henceforth he will be known as Captain GGH (which is short for Captain Guinney Green-Horn). (For future reference, none of us knows why this name pisses him off so much, but we figure if any of us had ever worked on a fishing boat we would). Also along for most of these adventures will be Jean (Junior), Captain GGH's father and retired Boston Special Police Officer. (If this little clan of miscreants and ne'er do wells were a case of rum, Jean would be our fresh, hot pot of coffee.) Then we come to Joe and Nate, our friends from down south (Greater Bangor area), we don't accept friends or fishing partners from any farther south than that. (I REALLY MEAN THIS, SO AFTER YOU'VE SEEN THE PICTURES OF THE FISH WE CATCH, DO NOT EMAIL ME TRYING TO TAG ALONG! IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A DRIVERS LICENSE THAT SHOWS YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE AT LEAST PARALLEL TO BANGOR, DON'T BOTHER. MY COPY OF DELORMES MIGHT BE OLD AND TATTERED, BUT EVEN THROUGH A COFFEE STAIN I CAN SEE THAT NEWPORT IS SOUTH OF BANGOR. RUIN YOUR LAKES, NOT MINE!)

Anyway, as for Joe and Nate, we'll refrain from the Skipper and Gilligan comments for now, but you'll see the pictures anyway.

And well, now that we've broken the seal on the bottle of vintage Gilligan's Island references, you might as well consider me the Professor, because I'm the mad chemist who decided to take this mix of funny, entertaining, and sometimes outright bizarre personalities and mix them all up into one romping, rolling recipe for ice-fishing disaster.

The sites; Cold Stream Pond in Enfield, Saponac Pond in Burlington, Beech Hill Pond in Dedham, and, perhaps, if we can manage to all get the time off, Caribou Lake in Millinocket.

The weapons; a twentysomething year old Jiffy Model 30 Ice Auger, freshly ghetto-painted and tuned. A bag full of traps, a few new Polars, Hardwater Explorer's (Both the Wal-Mart and Dick's Sporting Goods variety) and Heritage Lakers, and a new Frabill 2-Man Portable Ice Shack (Just right for a thousand pounds of freezing cold fisherman.)

The bait; whatever we can yard out of Phat (and by this I do mean Pretty Hefty and Trucculent) Joe's pond. Probably emerald shiners, creek chubs, a few smelts, maybe a handful of baby brookies if we don't eat 'em all up before we go.) It seems our biggest problem is not catching the bait (to date Joe, er, Phat Joe, claims to have caught well into the hundreds, yet to have graciously released most of them), but traversing the ice on the pond to and from the minnow trap. (Hey Joe! You really should feel lucky. If it wasn't almost forty degrees that day, your testicles might have never come back. What's that? (indistinguishable garble) Yeah, yeah.
I know they aren't as big as they were before, but as long as the wife doesn't notice, you're probably all set.

The story about Joe and his testicles going through the ice we'll save for another post, but let's just say that from the dock, all I could see was ass-crack and muddy water.