Catching big fish is a family affair for the Thompsons. At least that was the case this past weekend.
All three — dad Bill Thompson Jr., 52, of Cherryfield and sons Caleb Thompson, 22, and Ben Thompson, 15 — caught sizable lake trout while ice fishing on a favorite lake in Hancock County Friday and Saturday.
Bill’s was the biggest at 31 inches and approximately 11-12 pounds. Caleb’s was next at just shy of 30 inches long and an estimated weight of 9.5 pounds, while Ben’s was 29 inches and about 8.5 pounds.
Bill and Caleb are full-time lobster fishermen, operating out of Prospect Harbor. Caleb is his father’s main sternman, and Ben works on the boat at times as well. Bill had been an urchin diver for 23 years, but physical issues from nitrogen buildup from the constant diving made him decide to turn his recreational lobstering license into a commercial one.
But the fishing the Thompsons do for a living doesn’t deter them from hitting the hard water during their time off.
Last week, they took part in the state’s largest ice fishing derby, Long Lake Ice Fishing derby in St. Agatha, for the first time. They caught salmon and brook trout on Long Lake and one of his sons lost a big lake trout while trying to bring it in from Eagle Lake.
But on Friday, Bill and Caleb were closer to home. They arose before daylight to a snow storm and temperatures around 20 degrees and discovered the battery was dead in their four-wheeler. They jumped it using a portable unit and made their way to the public landing. Unfortunately, there was a big pressure ridge with unsafe ice at the landing, so they had to find a safe way onto the lake.
Once on the ice, the traps were set over 60-100 feet of water and in 9 inches of ice. Caleb had the first flag. The fish ran the nearly 200 yards of line out and had stolen the bait — a sucker that was more than 10 inches long — but it was long gone.
Bill said they had had difficulty finding bait around Cherryfield because there recently were back-to-back fishing derbies in the area and dealers hadn’t replenished supplies yet. That meant they were using big bait because it was what they could find.
The fish seemed to like it. They used about three dozen over the weekend.
There was another flag near shore that yielded nothing and soon one of Bill’s flags sprang up. It took him 3 minutes to get to the flag, he said. He was surprised to find that the fish had taken his line out all the way to the knot at the end of the spool.
“I got excited because it must be big tail strokes to take that line out so quick,” he said.
He jerked the line to set the hook in the fish and began pulling. At first he thought maybe the fish had spit the hook because there was no resistance. But when he had the line half pulled in, he felt some weight and kept pulling.
He had come to the loop in the line that marks the depth of the hook when the fish began to go in big circles. Bill said that by the feel he thought it had to be at least 10 pounds. It took him 15-20 minutes to get the fish to the hole because it kept making runs to the bottom of the lake. After the third time, Caleb was able to grab it at the hole before it could go deep a fourth time.
It had the 14-inch sucker bait sticking out of its mouth.
After measuring the fish and observing how healthy it was, Bill released it back into the water. The Thompsons are catch and release advocates, and have replicas done if they want a memory for their walls.
The day saw temperatures reach the 30s, and with no wind, every flag likely was a fish.
Caleb had been looking all day for a certain sweet spot in the lake where they had caught nice fish before. He finally found it, he told his father. He put in a trap and the flag went up shortly after. The fish had hit the line so hard that it back-spooled on the reel, knotting up the line and snapping it. The fish was lost.
Two hours later, Caleb got his big fish. It spooled all of the line off the reel, like his father’s did. When he got the fish up through the ice, he noticed the top half of its tail fin was gone.
Bill and Caleb were so excited about their successful day when they got home that Ben got caught up in their enthusiasm and decided to go with them the next day.
“It was a fun day of fishing we won’t forget,” Bill said.
Saturday wasn’t as warm as Friday morning, only in single digits with wind and a heavy snow storm. The air temperatures never made it above 15 degrees and with the wind chill, it was well below zero, Bill said.
Ben’s flag went up in less than half an hour after he set his traps and he reeled in his big lake trout — the biggest one he’s ever caught — in that first hour.
The snow was blowing across the ice, slushing up the fishing holes and freezing the slush over the cross members of the traps. The fishermen had to de-ice traps every couple hours. At one point when the men emerged from their shelter, the wind had rolled the snow into hand-sized balls that were all over the lake, Bill said.
“We went into the shack in a normal snowfall. We came out and there were millions of snowballs all over the lake. I have never seen anything like it,” he said.
