For shame!
 

Helping a friend get his bobhouse off the ice in Meredith bay yesterday. UNBELIEVABLE MESS left behind by a few Ice fishermen! I was really shocked at what these people left behind! WTF!!

Its people like that that ruin it for EVERYONE!

Woodsy

They can take it out, but not bring it home
 

Thanks for posting pictures

That's incredible how they left the mess after enjoying the lake doing their fishing. Hopefully someone that was fishing near them and might know who they were will turn them into the F&G. That is really uncalled for.:(

For Shame
 

Imagine what is below the ice surface on the bottom that we cannot see. :mad:

Find these guys
 

With all th pictures of Meredith this winter we should be able to ID who's mess this is.

That's crazy, who would leave it like that? Hopefully they come back to pick up. I would do it myself if I could get up there this week...

Shocking. I hope they are fined and forced to clean it up -- SOON.

idiot
 

with all the trailers, vendors, huts, visitors and everything that was on the ice during pond hockey, when the weekend was over, you'd never know anything took place there. And this one idiot, who I'm sure was set up all winter amongst all the other Meredith bobhouses, leaves this. With everyone out there so close this past winter, someone must know who was in this spot. There's some nice stuff that will be floating around just in time for boating in a few weeks. All the other people cleaned up well before they took their huts off.

I second that!

report it top the Police
 

That is some serious litter. I see bottles, cans, canvas, and a 1lb propane tank in the fire. Can Meredith PD look in to it or is it up to Fish and game?

I haven't stopped to look this year yet...
 

Each year I am beside myself to look out at Alton Bay from the parking lot, and see all the 2x4's or 2x6's left on the ice when bob houses are removed.

As an earlier poster alluded, much like a back packer, if you bring it in, bring it out.

I have often wondered why they would not use a paving brick as a base. At least it will sink with the ice melting, not becoming a floating hazard to boating.

Woodsy, I hesitate to say thanks for posting, because it is so frustrating to see such garbarge left on the lake (ice). It almost looks like that was the site of the bob house fire. If so, someone should have a record of it, either Fish and Game or Meredith FD, or some other agency.

It is such a shame.

Call NATGEO, see if they got that on film.....probly not!

I chiseled all of my blocking out of the ice, these clowns should be ashamed of themselves.

I know the honest ice fishers will hate me, but maybe F&G needs to organize this winter activity. Similar to a camp ground, sites could be numbered and registered so it's known who is responsible for the bill to clean this up.

Lazy slobs, pure and simple. Explains why there is so much crap floating in the water right after ice-out every year.:mad:

If anything else the karma police will get them.

It is really time to charge a stiff fee for each Bob House. It costs me over $100 to register my boat for a short time in the water and pay for protection of the lake. Why does the State allow these guys to get away free for their time on the lake? And in the meantime, develop a fee for any trash left behind that is charged against their driving license renewal. Fees....to start out fee should be a $100 minimum per structure under 20 sq. ft.(4X5 ft) From 21 to 36 sq. ft. (unto 6X6 ft) the fee goes to $150. Over 36 sq. feet, fee is $200. They can register their bob house just like a boat....and get them to place boat type decals on the side in plain view from two directions, just like a boat in large letters/numbers. The state can give them decals just like a boat. It is also incumbent on people to take as many pictures to weed out the jerks. I hope this person is found !!!!!!!

I bet thats a real nice treat to wake up to looking out from your $800 a night room @ Church landing....

Pigs. I bet there's a pyramid of empty beer cans, on the bottom, under their fishing hole. Maybe, that's why so many of the lakes in NH, don't allow ice fishing.

Interesting and sad, I didn't know some lakes don't allow ice fishing. Unless, there may be a specific reason for that body of water not to allow it. I hope it doesn't fall under 'been there done that, & live and learn.' I hate how one, or a few, can tarnish a reputation of so many other respectable participants.

If the glass is only 1/2 full, I suppose I should thank the rest of the bob houseeries and bob houseerettes for having and showing some respect and cleaning up. :)

I agree. The vast majority only throw nightcrawlers in the lakes. I'm not sure of the reason's that some lakes don't allow ice fishing. Probably, more to do with fish stock than pollution, but i wouldn't doubt that liter bugs are on the minds of the people who make those decisions. This site has all the restrictions on all the lakes of NH. http://www.eregulations.com/newhamps...special-rules/

As a member of the Merrymeeting Lake Association, I've been contacted several times over the years by other associations inquiring about the status of ice fishing on our lake. In every case, they were contacting us because they were considering a ban due to bad behavior and littering.

As always, the inconsiderate behaviors of a few lead to restrictions on all.

I hope that those responsible for this mess are found and prosecuted/fined to the limits of laws. Better to penalize the few problem makers than hurt the majority who are considerate.

Also.....where do you think the bathrooms are?

So once again we have another recreational activity that turns into a pay to play scenario. Bad idea.

First, every single bob house is required to have posted the name and address of the owner. So how would a registration number afixed to a bob house make the responsible party any easier to track down once the house is gone? It doesn't.

Second what do you think the state is going to do with that money? It'll go into the general fund and be spent on anything the nitwits in Concord want to do.

Third, why is it every time there is a problem the first thing that comes to mind is slap some sort of fee or registration on it? Since when has that EVER solved anything? All it does is make enjoying things such as ice fishing more expensive and what makes you think the folks that are out there ice fishing can afford it or would be willing to pay... or is that the overall game plan. Afterall, having to look at all those ice houses out on the lake are an eye sore to the beautiful people. What's next, no bob-house zones?

If I sound a bit trite well I am cause I'm sick to death of fees especially when I see money being collected yet not being spent in support of the betterment of said activity.

Seeing trash left like that gets me just as mad as everyone else, but charging fees for bob houses is a ridiculous idea. Just like it is for canoes and kayaks.

Yikes, lol, never thought of that. So I guess it is ok to pee in the lake, you just needs walls on your boat. Not to mention what else they're dumping into the lake. ( ok, yeah a little pun intended). If leaving all that garbage to fall into the lake, I suppose a little toilet paper wouldn't be high on their list of worries.

Agree, fees aren't the answer. Any time an effort is taken to improve anything compensation is wanted or people see it as a way to raise funds for something. People who are working in the office to have this task 'most likely' are already there so the salary is paid anyway. A fee should be so minute to cover materials it would be small.
I didn't know the name and address was on the bob houses already. It doesn't do any good now when they're gone though. A simple organized list of who is on the lake could make people accountable for their own personal landfill. A sticker, or better a flag, would let others know from a glance if they registered or not. 'What if' the towns or F&G took the responsibility and use a flag that was numbered and mounted to the top of the house. It would be addressable to an owner via the reg number and could be reused every year. Hear me out...pay a fee to register and get a flag, then when you return it by a set date you get your fee back unless you damaged the flag. This could be an option for locals while out of town visitors get a different color flag and do not get their fee back. Each flag number could correspond to a lot location on the ice so it's known who is where. Also for visitors or parties, just tell them I'm in bob house #1 in Meredith Bay or what ever.
I can only suggest an idea and hope it might spark a solution from others to help out a sport being embarrassed by a few.

Let's hope Fish and Game recorded their name and address. There still may be consequences. What a shame for sure!

Yup. Notify Thom Yorke.

The thing that sticks ou of that mess for me is the piece of signage. the "UE" with a red stripe at the top and yellow along the bottom. That is hockey related. That is part of a Bauer hockey equipment sign. What would be the best way to get that stuff out of there? Can it be picked up or is it frozen in?

pictures
 

Hard to beleive there is not a picture out there of the bobhouse that was there. Someone must have something. Might be able to look at a picture taken during the winter and then stand in the same spot and take the same picture to "place" the house in that location. Maybe use that fold up shanty in the background as a landmark (if it was there when the bobhouse was.) Can you tell I watch Castle?

Went by today, the mess has been cleaned up, which made my day because I was going to go out clean it..

So maybe this was a false alarm?? Maybe whoever made the mess (hockey tournament people, ice fishermen, whoever) had every intention of cleaning it up??

My guess is that it was some local good Samaritan fishermen who probably saw this mess posted and did a good deed!!

Cudos to whoever cleaned it up!!

Dan

Need some legislation
 

Funny how a certain group of people on the lake blame everything on boaters when they should be looking at all the users of the lake, including themselves.

No More Legislation
 

We don't need legislation as there is already littering laws in place. They just need to be enforced...

Dan

Since the name and address of the Bob House owner is required to be posted on the house, it shouldn't be too difficult for F&G or the Marine Patrol to tour the problem areas with a GPS and record the info on the houses and their GPS location. I noticed the remains of a fire in the pictures. I thought it was against the law to build a fire on the ice.

That doesn't always work. Many guys moves their shacks around during the season.

The ice fishermen probably pee in the same place that boaters pee in during the summer when they anchor for hours on end on the lake.

So as an ice fisherman, and in defense of ice fisherman, I have a comment.

1. Ice fisherman drill holes in the ice to fish. There are no holes anywhere in this picture.

2. The tents in the picture are not ice fishing tents, they are camping tents. Ice fisherman use tents that are better quality and can stand up to harsh conditions. No ice fisherman would use a camping tent- it would get blown right over.

3. There's a banner frozen in the ice. The banner reads BAUER. Bauer is a hockey company: http://www.bauer.com/player/index

If you look at their website you'll see that their logo is the banner in the picture. This debris was left by a hockey gathering, not ice fisherman! It's unfortunate how quickly you guys jumped on board the bandwagon to blame fisherman.

mmmm
 

I think one ice fisherman was being blamed, not all. I think if this happened right after the hockey tournament, we would of seen pictures before now about us all complaining how the hockey tournament crowd left the ice. Yes, that is a Bauer sign in the ice, could of been on the side of their hut, or maybe they were trying to burn that too. There is also a white bucket there that plaster usually comes in....maybe it was a drywaller

That sounds far fetched but I suppose it's possible... although remotely. I had to Google "Bauer" to find out what it was and then it all came together. I mean I certainly wasn't there and it doesn't sound like too many other people were either but nothing I see in that picture points towards ice fisherman. All I'm saying is let's look before we shoot.

this was no hockey game....
 

So I, too, am an avid ice-fisherman, (and all season fisherman), and I fish almost exclusively in Meredith Bay. And about 20 years and 25 pounds ago, I was an avid hockey player, (now just a fan). I can tell you that this was no hockey game. The condition of the ice in Meredith Bay late this winter would not allow for a hockey game, or any skating. In fact, you couldn't even see the ice under two feet of snow. The portion of the "bauer" sign means nothing

It doesn't really matter whether the people were ice fishermen, hockey players, or aliens from mars....the fact remains they were slobs. The only excuse would be if someone from their group was having the big one and they had to make an emergency run to LRGH, (although, the person would have a better chance of surviving by going to a Vet....but that's another story...)

MM

I suppose you're right it doesn't really matter what the person was doing. It's just such an outrageous scene that no one wants to be associated with it. I get pretty infuriated when I see something like that I guess I jump to a reaction to. I salute the people who cleaned it up!

Makes me think of:

Hello all who have been reading this post. The bobhouse in question was directly next to me this year and I also was not impressed! The only help I can offer is they were picking up some of the mess the weekend before ice out and hanging out with Pete who owns "The Lodge" bobhouse. I do not know Pete, but if anyone does, Im sure he could tell you who it was.

I have no dog in this hunt, but, it looks like a lot of the debris in question is embedded in the ice. What if the person who had the bobhouse, pulled it off one day but didn't have whatever equipment he felt was needed to chop the ice enough to remove the trash, so he left it...to return a day or whatever later with equipment and enough help to clean it up. I don't know if this is what happened, but the mess is gone.
If this isn't how this went down, then kudos to the individual(s) who did clean it up

I tend to believe you have the most logical answer, although being an avid ice fisherman myself and owner of 2 bobhouses I will say that during the course of the season the conditions change constantly on the ice. I started by blocking my shacks up 6" off the ice and by the end of the season I had to block them up another 8", a total of 14" from the original surface.
When I remove the houses at the end of the season I "try" to recover all my blockage to use again next season and sometimes it takes a couple of trips out to get them all without chiseling your arms off. I still have to make one more trip to retreive my last blocks which are still 6" down. But in any event, THIS person had a very sloppy unsightly area from the get go and unfortunately it got frozen into the ice. Glad it is gone, my favorite ice fishing forum are bashing this guy worse than this site is. We do not like the bad PR.

Please come forward
 

Like I said before, if you know the person who owns "The Lodge" bobhouse he can tell you who it is that left that mess. Sad part is, I didn't think much of the persons name on the house of the time, but they are from Meredith I do remember that. Just don't recall the name.

Better yet, I found some pics of my trashy neighbors on the lake this year, Can you identify these houses?

Must be careful about accusing individuals and going on a witch hunt on here I am sure this forum is not for that purpose. And I can clearly see from the pictures that the shacks that you are pointing out as the perps are clearly much closer to the shore in front of the Inn at Church Landing than the original picture of the trash left on the ice. just saying...

RiverRat, I thought I was being helpful by providing these photos. I had my shack right next to these guys and know of all that they left behind. I picked up half the mess of bottles, cans, plastic sled and garbage that were not shown in the original photo. I chiseled out one of those spools for them because they had not been able or willing to get it out. What should we be careful of? If everyone just wants to complain but do nothing, then I'm sorry. If someone had bagged me doing something like that, I would be out there ASAP clearing my name. I sense you feel an allegiance with your fellow fisherman not wanting to be a rat. But if we don't police our own, the few bad apples will ruin it for the rest of us.

For what it's worth, the ice fishing community also finds this mess to be appalling.
http://www.iceshanty.com/ice_fishing...topic=290857.0

I can clearly see that narrow popup next to the red bobhouse is shown in the first 2 photos. Worse, it looks like it probably was the bathroom.

just one
 

This year was probably the most houses I have seen on the bay in a long time and right up until the last weekend. With that said, this was the only spot that was left like that. Everyone else dod a great job cleaning up their sites before leaving the ice. Sad thing is.....I'm sure their site looked like that throughout the winter, no respect for their "neighbors".

I assure you that I would have no allegiance with anybody that leaves a mess like that on the ice, all I was saying is the photos of before and after look to be of a different distance from shore and was concerned the wrong people would be blamed. We do need to police our own area and beyond, the Newfound lake crew do a fine job of policing their lake and parking areas and we should learn by example. Meredith bay has earned a reputation as being party central during the derby and on weekends and that's ok if that is what you want but, don't leave crap behind for someone else to pick up. Take out what you take in.

Well, you should see the bottom of the Lake in the areas where there's a lot of ice fishing. Look for the telltale pile of beer cans. All that stuff you see will end up on the bottom. Every dive is an adventure, because you never know what you are going to find.

And the boaters can thank the slobs for the discarded wood floating around, waiting to ding your hull...

Hasn't changed in 50 years...
 

In my youth, I did a lot of snorkeling and scuba, and it amazed me how ice fishermen could locate a bob house in the same place year after year, as evidenced by the pyramids of beer cans, which in the 50's would show rusting. Sometimes it was a really large pile, and in other cases it was several piles, close together, and sometimes overlapping.

And as a kid, I had learned "if you bring it in, bring it out". Thank you BSA and Camp Lawrence.

Not picking sides here but I think this is a bit overdone to blame ice fisherman for all that. Sure there always a few slobs around but I spend a fair amount of time on the ice and all in all the ice around the shacks is kept fairly clean at least in the Tuftonboro/Moultonboro area and snowmobiling thru other areas I dont see garbage on the ice. There is plenty of debris (beer cans, coffee caps, plastic bags, diapers, cigarette butts etc) floating around the lake most everday I take a boat ride.

What is done in a bob house...
 

Empties are deep sixed through the ice hole inside (and probably outside as well.)

No argument about lots of trash on the lake year round. That's just an indication of no pride in the lakes and rivers in our area.

Give Me A Break!
 

Your condemning an entire group of sportsmen with that statement and I take offense! I don't do that and I am an ice fishermen!! I can also tell you that the MAJORITY of ice fishermen do not do that!! What we bring in we bring out!

Dan

No matter the group...
 

There are always bad apples.

Statistically I must be the biggest litter bug on the planet.
I'm an ice fisherman, snowmobiler, mountain biker, and boater.

Only a small fraction of people in these groups give us a bad name. Heck, I chased a blowing paper napkin about 100 yards across the Winona this winter so were not all bad.

Not saying the majority, Dan.
 

Just my own experience from diving years ago. I'm sure it was not every bob house, in fact I would guess a minority of them. But it sure was easy to understand where the pile of cans / bottles came from, and how they got there.

And also from a few friends who had bob houses as teenagers. They said they brought the beer out under the cover of darkness, stuck the cans under the floor of the bob house, and went out the next day to "fish", and when they were done with the can, that is just what they did.

Sorry if you took offense...not saying all do it...just I know that some do.

Dave/

Litter is one of our biggest pet peeves. How people can just wing bottles and cans and wrappers out the car window I will never understand. We have picked up trash for many years in North Andover, MA and on the beaches in Florida and now here in Gilford. Yesterday was our first day out this spring! And then we went to NH DOT in Laconia for a supply of blue bags in which to leave the trash on the roadsides for pickup. It's actually kind of scary because the cars whiz by fast, but we do it because this is now our home and we think this area is so beautiful and litter on the roads is a blight on the landscape.

Thank You! :)

Carry on...

Dan