Jordan Pond – Acadia National Park

I used to  ice fish most of the weekends during the winter on Jordan Pond which is in Acadia National Park. It is a rugged looking area especially in the winter. The pond has mountains erupting from the east and west sides which create a wind tunnel effect and the wind is often blowing consistently there. Jordan Pond is deep – upwards of 150 feet in some places and multiple springs that used to make the portable depth finder on my canoe go haywire and not be able to find bottom. Lake trout (togue) and landlocked salmon are found within it’s depths. It was originally part of the ocean and carved during the last ice age which also left a large erratic rock on top of one of the mountains next to the pond known as Bubble Rock. As the glacier melted till was deposited at the south end of the pond and cut it off from the ocean. On the west side of the pond is an area known as the tumbledown where rocks from the glacial age continue to fall to this day, especially in the spring. On the left side of the pond before the tumbledown is an area known as ice cove where ice used to be harvested in the days before we had electricity for refrigeration. My family still has pictures of the ice being harvested with large hand saws that cut the ice into blocks. During the winter months ice shanties dot the ice which people use to stay warm when they go fishing. They are typically eight by 12 with windows to view the tip ups outside used for fishing. Some have wood stoves in them and some are heated by propane, and some are even heated simply by the sun. I had one of those shacks and ventured out one weekend day when the temperature was 22 below 0. There was little wind that morning but I froze on the way out to the shack. After warming up some by the fire I kindled in the woodstove, I ventured out and drilled the first hole of the day as the sun was beginning to peak onto the ice. The auger I used drilled a 10 inch hole and after getting the tip up out and ready to go, a process that only took a few minutes at the most the hole had frozen enough that I had to break the ice with my foot and re-clear the ice from the hole. I stood and watched as the hole refroze again. I cleared the ice and again stood to watch the water freeze. It seemed to fill up with tiny air bubbles, almost as if boiling water without the rolling boil. I watched the phenomenon a couple of more times, and then drilled a new hole for the next tip up. By then the wind had begun to pick up a little bit and the small smelts I was using for bait would literally freeze solid in the few seconds it was out of the bucket, put on the hook, and into the drilled hole. By this time I was feeling that this was a futile attempt to try to catch a fish, packed up and went home, but I’ll always remember the day that I watched water freeze.