Jim McPherson in Bowdoinham is among the smelt camp owners who are waiting for the right combination of weather to give them a smelt season for the first time in at least two years.
McPherson was hopeful at the end of December. Until the warm spell this week, he had 4-5 inches of ice and some snow. Now he needs that combination again — without the warm spell — to have a season.
Dozens of smelt camps used to dot Maine’s tidal rivers four or five decades ago. The season began shortly after Christmas and ran through the end of March, but climate change has ripped that tradition apart. Several camps have gone out of business and the ones that are left have shortened seasons, if any at all.
The camps are made up of four-person ice shacks with a rectangular hole cut in the ice inside. Most are equipped with heaters and some kind of cooking device. McPherson charges $20 per person per tide, with children fishing free on Sunday.
McPherson chose not to put camps out last year in a brief period when there was seven inches of ice because warming temperatures were predicted. He is monitoring this year’s trends before he decides what to do, but his first priority is the safety of those fishing from his camps, he said.
He hopes he can have some kind of season so that he doesn’t lose his third-generation fishing families. A lot of his business comes from out of state, he said. He plans to hang on at least another year and see how it goes.
“I hope it freezes up in the next couple of weeks or it will be too late,” said McPherson, 70, who has been running smelt camps for about 45 years. “We need a normal season of ice and snow.”
He needs a combination of snow and ice to make his camp business work efficiently. The snow builds into an ice ramp from the shore to his camps for a distance of 200-300 feet across a swampy area. It also builds up along the banks, helping to hold the channel ice, which is pulled about by the tide’s effect on the river, he said.
There was enough snow before the warm spell to start building his ice road. Now it’s all gone.
In a good year, he puts out about 20 camps and his fishermen shift with the tides. In lesser years, he puts out from 12 to 15 camps, depending on the conditions. He hasn’t had a season the last two years.
There once were three smelt camp businesses operating out of Bowdoinham. Now McPherson’s is the only one. Leighton’s on the Abagadasset, which runs into the Kennebec River, hasn’t opened for the last two years either, he said.
Jim Worthing of Worthing’s Smelt Camps said Friday he would see what happens in a week or so before he decides what to do. Last year he put out about 10 shacks for only four or five days. He said that with the dam removal from the Kennebec, it takes more to freeze the river into ice.
The smelt run doesn’t last as long either, McPherson said. As kids, he and his friends would catch a couple of five-gallon buckets at a time and sell the smelts to the local fish markets. One local businessman shipped smelts to Boston and New York City by train. The income helped sustain their families during the winter.
The legal limit now is a gallon per person per day.
Regardless of those changes, a lot of things have to go just right to get a good season, he said.
McPherson has tried putting his camps on floats, but ice would build up around them when it formed, making it hard to get the camps off the river in the spring. Also, ice freezing and breaking up in a warming trend, then refreezing brings in mud and grass into the new ice, which makes it a poorer quality and less safe. It’s also hard on chainsaw blades when he cuts new fishing holes, he said.
“I haven’t figured out how to change with the climate,” McPherson said.
