A small village of shanties is spread out before us as we make our way across the ice. Despite a snowfall that is increasing in intensity and the fact that it is a weekday, there are a surprising ...

Patty Valeriani (left) and Jimmy Merrill leave the ice after smelt fishing on Jan. 22, 2024, on the Androscoggin River in Brunswick. The large eddy below the dam was one of the few winter traditional ...

MOST ANGLERS in my coastal location relate to saltwater smelt as an ice fishing resource and the hundreds of smelt shanties that have dotted the Great Bay ice over the last many years certainly ...

Derek Saxon, owner of D’s Camps, walks across the ice on the Cathance River in Bowdoinham, where Wednesday's temperature dipped into the high teens that night. (Rich Abrahamson/Staff Photographer) ...

Shantytowns come alive in the night, as anglers use bright lights to draw Northern Michigan smelt up from the dark bottoms of inland lakes. A frozen lake in the dead of night is a desolate place ...