PEI Ice Fishing

This was February 2009 on one of the coldest PEI days I can remember, which made me feel safe on the ice as I walked with my friend, John, across an inlet of the Northumberland Strait. The Strait averages about sixty feet deep between Nova Scotia and PEI, so it heats up in summer and offers the warmest waters north of the Carolinas, and in winter it can freeze pretty much from province to province. The burgeoning coyote population on PEI got its start when the canids first trotted over the ice one winter from Nova Scotia. Once you have coyotes, you’ll always have coyotes. They are here to stay.

PEI is having an easy winter in 2010 and the ice on the Strait probably isn’t thick enough to hold me, let alone the smelt shack, and the propane heater that makes it possible to stay out a bit longer to try and spear another frying pan load. Nothing beats smelts dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and fried up to a crisp in a cast iron frying pan. ‘Some good’, as they say on the island.

I love a mild PEI winter and they all seem mild the past number of years. Only January and February seem to have a few biting days, but next year I’ll hope for a quick cold snap, allowing me check in to the ’Smelt Hotel’ for a few days of waiting and watching, until a smelt or two slowly swims towards my bait bundle. At that magic moment I aim my spear and hopefully hit the mark…then head home for breakfast.