It took Jon B. just over ten minutes to understand why Moosehead Lake is the brook trout mecca of the United States.
The Texas-based angler, filming his final outing of the Maine ice-fishing season, drilled a four-foot-by-four-foot sight hole through 16 inches of ice and within minutes had a 24-inch-class male brook trout cruise directly below his feet. By the end of the session he'd landed three more trophy-class fish — including a 22-inch-plus male he called "the second biggest of my life."
The approach — rarely filmed in the United States but common in parts of Canada — turns ice fishing into something closer to sight fishing in a flats boat. A power auger drills the perimeter, a hand-saw completes the square, and the freed ice slab is pushed sideways under the remaining sheet. A blackout hub tent over the top eliminates glare and effectively creates a viewing window into the lake below.
"Rather than using electronics or mapping to find fish, we are 100 percent going to be hopefully, again, fingers crossed, watching these fish dart through here and chase our lures," Jon B. explains to viewers. "It's almost like open water fishing through the ice."
That first 24-inch fish spooked off a camera clank. "That was one of the biggest brook I've ever seen," Jon B. says. "That thing was like probably 24 in. It was a massive fish."
He lost a second big male on a rattle bait eat, then landed a coloured-up hen. Late in the day, after switching to a Frostbite spoon in a smelt pattern and dead-sticking it on his partner Asher's advice, the big male fish — returning to the hole for a third time — finally committed.
"That fish has come in this hole three times and we finally got her on the dead stick," Jon B. says.
At 22 inches and estimated close to five pounds, the fish came up short of Jon B.'s personal best of 24 inches (also from Maine) but became the second biggest brook trout of his career.
Jon B. pitches the trip as a case for Moosehead's legacy.
"Maine to a degree still is, but especially used to be, one of the best brook trout fisheries probably in the world," he tells viewers. "Next to like Labrador and Nova Scotia. But if we're talking about United States, definitely the best in United States."
Historical Maine fishing accounts he references describe anglers walking off trains at Greenville with fly rods, catching seven- and eight-pound brook trout, and walking back to the carriages with fish in hand. Over-harvest hollowed that out. Jon B. closes the piece with a deliberate conservation note.
"I know you can keep brook trout, and I have nothing against it," he says. "But if you want big fish to live and continue to thrive in places like this … proper fishing skills, which sometimes I fail at doing correctly, and also catch and release is super super super important."
All three fish were released in the hole.