 What's up guys? Joe Holland here. I am fishing with my good buddy Jack today and we are on a wild Maine native brook trout kick today. We are going to fish the state's smallest pond. We call it the tiniest wild native brook trout pond. It's called Blue Hole. We're down in Southern Maine and this pond is tiny. It is 134,000 square inches and we're going to be able to cover it all in one day. We came in last night to check and make sure there was ice. We hiked in and took my axe and chipped away and found that there was not a lot of ice, not a lot of safe ice, so we're taking extra precautions today. We have a rope out on the ice and we have these pegs right here so that way if we do fall through or break through we're going to have to get out. We're not going to be able to fish it very long. Yesterday we got maybe an hour to fish it before the ice starts weakening and giving away. It's really milky. That's why we're checking it today. Weak ice. It's not the good hard black ice that has strength to it. This is the stuff that's very unpredictable. We brought in a sled. We brought in the ice tent not for ourselves as much as for the viewing because we're going to try to sight fish these things and you get a lot better view if you make it darker above the hole that you caught and hopefully the cameras will be able to pick up the fish too. We don't really know if there's brookies in here. We're just guessing so we're hoping they're in here and it's fed by two little feeder brooks that are still wide open but what happens is the brook trout in the winter come out of those brooks in any pond or lake they can get into and this happens to be the only pond on these brooks. State law allows us to keep five brookies over six inch. We're just catching release today. If they're in there at all we don't we're not we don't really want to take any or hurt this little bond. We just want to have some fun and catch some fish and and see what these little tiny native brookies look like. Thanks for tuning in guys. Come along. I think it's going to be a great day where you're either going to catch us falling in or you're going to see us catch some or you're going to see us zero. I'm going to make sure the chest mount's going. You're going to get hurt. Unconsider going down backwards. Just just walk it down so we don't break the gear. You're going to dump it. You'll either dump it or hit a tree. Yeah but what about the gear? What do you want to do? I'm young. I'm thinking on a scale of one to ten on this being a good idea. We're around two. Yeah I was thinking two. But it's entertaining so that's okay. Yeah I don't know what it's going to be entertaining. Just hope if we don't break any stuff including my bones it's a win. Exactly. If I wipe out plus you've got all this fishing line dragging behind you so that'll slow you down. Yeah that three pound test will probably that's a pretty good anchor. Yeah it's like bungee jumping. So what's the plan here Jack? Where are you heading? Do you see that little gap in those trees? Yeah. I'm going to have to probably veer either right or left. I'll see which way Mother Nature takes me to avoid that pine tree with that tree in the middle there. Okay you think you're going to make it up? If I'm going left I'm going to have to bail and not break the ice through the pond. Okay. Oh you're planning on going all the way. I'm going to go to the pond. Okay. We got brooch out to catch. I'm pretty sure you won't make it to the pond. I would. Holy. This is bad. No broken tips. Just the broken two broken reels. Well this one's not broken. You think it back. Good idea or bad idea? Probably bad idea. Yeah. Tree. Tree always wins. Check the phone. Phone's good. Oh you had your phone? Yeah. Nice. All right we're almost there. I'd say don't ride it the rest of the way. Came in yesterday cut these holes to check for ice. The ice is super sketchy. Maybe three inches of terrible white milky ice. But we cut some holes, spread some water on top so it would get a chance to freeze a little bit stronger and hopefully hopefully it strengthened up a little bit since last night. Nice brooch brooch. Good job. Yeah I might have lost some real too. Oh no. No rods but two reels bro. Yeah. Well we made it. Yeah. We should have taken the rods out before you did that. Yeah. I said on the other one I was like should I leave the rods in? I was like no I don't want to go back up the hill again. Oh oh the crack pretty good. Do you hear that? Oh she's cracking pretty good. She's cracking a lack in Jack. Safety wise we have our spikes on. These things pull apart and have spikes in case I fell through and then we tied a rope to a tree. As you could see we tied a rope to a tree and ran it right into the shack where we were fishing so that way if we fell through and for some reason if we couldn't hit bottom which we should be able to then we could pull ourselves out. But it's you know it's about five to six foot so it is over your head or close to it. It's not good ice anyway. I'll show you what the ice looks like. It's a good solid two inches probably. So there it is right there probably two inches. Well actually no maybe an inch. It's as thick it's about as thick as my thumb and oh geez that just went down. Let me get off the ice and then it's it's it's not really good hard black ice. It's milky white. This is bad. This is not good guys. Don't ever really trust this ice okay if you're over your head or on a big lake or anything like that. What you're looking for is good hard black ice. This is not good. This is milky clear. It doesn't have the strength that good hard black ice has. Hopefully there's some trout in here. Who knows. Nice little pencil brookie. Nice one. That's actually a keeper believe it or not. Look at that one guys. What a beauty huh. Beautiful colors on him. Look at how small he is. Yes baby look at the size of that one. Oh he popped off I got him. Look at the size of that one Jack. Thank you for letting me know he was there. That's a big one dude. That's a big one for a little tiny tiny spot like this. Nine and a half. Is that good? Yep. Nine and a half. Nine and a half. The one you just missed. Yeah. Guys this is the biggest one we've landed yet. He's nine and a half inches. Super native super super pretty fish. These things are unbelievable. They're hard to catch. Look how pretty that is. Beautiful beautiful fins on him. We're gonna get him back see if he knows how to get back. I'm getting this hole on me. Sorry to do you dirty on you. Yeah that's funny. That was dirty. Sorry there's big ones that are bowl rushing that. They're bowl rushing it. Did you see how I'm just sitting there I'm moving this much but moving it a million times like this look. I'm just doing that. That was awesome. He came flying in. Maybe you're too close to the camera. Another one. Beautiful brook trout. Look at these things dude. They got the stripes on them when they're small. The tiger trout. Well main tiger trout. I'm on fire Jack. I just got the hot hands of it. Yes the hot spot. Yeah maybe there's just a way from that camera. We can throw the camera on this side but I'm not walking over there. I don't want to move my word about falling through right now. So lures for today. This is one of my absolute favorite little brook trout lures. I think this one's made by 13 fishing. I don't know what they call it but I call it a mini or baby rattle trap because that's basically what it is or what it's emulating. So it looks like a little tiny bait fish and this one is gold on one side silver on the other which whatever. I like it because it's gold and shiny and it's got a little tiny rattle and it makes noise and it's the right size for brook trout. So it looks like a bait fish and it makes vibrations make noise and it's shiny so fish like shiny things. So that's one of my favorite little brook trout baits. I've used that for big brook trout too and for little ones it's just kind of fitting for them. That thing was pretty hot today caught a handful on that and then I figure there's no there's no shiners in this little tiny pond so most of the stuff these fish are eating in the winter are like bugs and nymphs and whatever is moving basically. I thought they'd be a little more aggressive but I think we spooked the fish and they're really spooky with us showing up. They weren't crazy aggressive but the other bait is this little tiny tungsten jig with I believe it's a clam that I cut in half and just looks like a nymph or some kind of worm or catfish or something weird. So that's the other one there just to have for a little bit difference. Hard to hook these fish because they hit so quick and they spit so quick unless you have treble hooks. Just to let you guys know who don't live in Maine and even if you live in Maine brooks and streams are closed to ice fishing usually by October and you're not allowed to ice fish them at all or even open water fish them if you can like I come in here make a cast here but it's not legal. We actually called the warden service to make sure that it was legal to fish here because if it's not in the book most things apply to general law if it's not in the book but we also want to clarify if this was actually a pond or just a brook. To us it looks like a very tiny pond so we called the warden service transferred us through like four or five people and then finally they transferred us to somebody in here we got an officer who said he knew it really well said as long as you're not on private property then you won't have a problem if you're on private property somebody's going to ask you to leave. So this is actually public land there's a hiking trail right here this is the smallest actual pond in the state of Maine especially with native brook trout. Thanks for tuning in today guys had an awesome day catching some of these native Maine brookies on a pond that I probably guarantee has never been ice fish before I think some guys hike in here there's a hiking trail and maybe open water fish it I found a bobber in the tree so I guess some people have been in here before it's no secret because the interstate is right there as you can see behind me so it's not really secret we heard a couple cars maybe skid a little bit when they saw the shack when they looked over because I'm sure nobody's ever had a shack on this thing either it was really fun catching these native Maine brook trout in their environment they come down into these little pools or what we call ponds for the winter because the streams and brooks will freeze a lot of times and or even dry out but the trouble they're facing and the thing I was really worried about when I got here was there's a ton of otter tracks coming off the banks around the snow and an otter can get in these little tiny ponds like this and just clean them out if there's a couple otter especially working together and that's why we're not catching anything huge one the environment won't really sustain anything huge but two the bigger brook trout are slower they're easier targets and they're bigger targets for the otters and the otters get in here and just wipe it out I gotta believe in this little tiny pond right here there's probably 50 native brook trout wintering in here we saw a handful of different schools today one school had 14 one maybe 20 and then a handful of schools that had like anywhere from four to ten in it they know this pond because they live here every day this pond if you get on a tiny pond like this they're gonna know you're here so that's why we tried to be as quiet as we could we spooked them a bunch of times just by moving our feet or jack's chair or even talking so we were that's why a lot of it was whispering and we tried not to move because actually a couple times just moving like our heads and looking over a couple of them darted away so definitely a closed environment for these fish and that's what made them so hard to catch and they were really difficult to catch and they never really sat under the hole for any significant amount of time unless they were actually there to feed you know they just kind of cruise through and cruise through and cruise through and keep moving which is what most native brook trout do anyway this is the brook that feeds that pond one of them so those brookies will make it all the way up here here jump across with the front you're gonna wipe out dude oh yeah no doubt was it worth it i think so yeah it's gonna be a cool video yeah it was fun dude we caught brookies