Antony proudly shows off his fish
Chaffin Pond is a pretty 13-acre body of water located in Windham, Maine (see the Maine Atlas and Gazetteer map 5 C2). Access is super-easy! Drive on Route 302 north in downtown Windham, pass the Home Depot sign (Franklin Drive) and take the next right on Chaffin Pond Reserve Drive (Donnabeth Lippman Park) just before the Sherman Williams store. The pond is a couple of 100 ft down the road. Ample parking is available.
This one is a jumpy little bugger!
Chaffin Pond was closed to ice fishing for many years but became accessible to the hard-water crowd for the first time in 2017. Even though I’ve fished it in the spring and summer in the past, it’s high time that I sample it through the ice. The state richly stocked this small pond with brook trout this fall in anticipation of the winter season. If you add up all the numbers, the fall 2018 stocking effort amounted to 1101 trout, or 85 trout per acre!! And that doesn’t count the 660 trout they put in there last spring! Also, the brookies which survive the ice fishing onslaught can grow bigger because the pond has a cold, oxygenated layer at the bottom where trout can thrive in the summer. Hence, there’s always a chance of catching a big one. Chaffin Pond has become a highly popular early-season ice-fishing destination in the Sebago Lake region, similar to Otter Pond #2 and Otter Pond #4 in Standish, because of its small size, easy access, early freeze-up, and abundant trout population.
Your blog author is taking this guy home for the frying pan
I arrive at the Chaffin Pond parking lot at 6:20 am (sunrise is at 7:09 am this morning). It’s essentially pitch-black but I’m already joined by three other fishing parties! It looks like the place will be busy this morning… My son Joel, his wife, and two kids will join me at 7:30 am. We made sure to get the boys out on the ice today because the temperature is forecast to climb into the balmy mid 40’s. I load up my gear in the sled and make a beeline for the northeast corner of the pond which will remain in the shadows late into the morning. The ice is a respectable 7” thick (not bad for mid-December) and also completely glare. I drill a dozen-and-a-half holes and deploy four tip ups. The rest will be jigging holes. I get three flags and one trout during the set-up process, which is always a good sign. I call Joel to tell him that the fish are biting and that he needs to hurry up!
It’s not just about catching fish, but also family bonding and making memories!
They arrive by 8 am and we quickly deploy another 10 tip-ups. The action is essentially non-stop for the next 2.5 hours. A flag pops up every 10 minutes (sometimes faster, sometimes slower) and we’re running ourselves ragged, with the boys yelling and screaming each time. By the end of the trip, we’ve had a total of about two dozen flags, and 16 trout. Each one of us brings home their two-fish limit for the frying pan. I arrived with 40 baitfish and left with none!
Joel caught the winning fish this morning
Surprisingly, I jigged on and off for two hours or so but did not elicit a single hit… Clearly, the brookies were entirely keyed in on the live bait and didn’t care for the jig, which is unusual. But then, fish can and do have a mind of their own. The place also filled up quickly. I counted about 30 people ice fishing all over the pond by the time we left at 10:30 am. Finally, I suspect that the fast, early-season action experienced today will quickly subside (say, by mid-January) as the brookies are systematically removed and the surviving ones become wearier of all the commotion on top. So, hit this pond early in the season, and make sure to bring a kid 😊
The place is hoppen’ this morning!
The results: We caught a total of 16 brook trout in 3.5 hours of fun and non-stop family fishing.
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