The leftover fish from two upcoming ice fishing derbies will be distributed to food pantries and soup kitchens across Cumberland County, thanks to an expansion of the state’s Hunters for the Hungry program.
Jason Hall, director of Hunters for the Hungry, an initiative of Maine’s Emergency Food Assistance Program, said he expects to collect as much as 500 pounds of fish from the Jan. 25 Crystal Lake derby and more than 1,000 pounds from the Feb. 15-16 Sebago Lake derby. Wayside Food Programs, based in Portland, will distribute the fish across Cumberland County.
Typically, the 18-year-old Hunters for the Hungry initiative distributes 2,000 to 2,500 pounds of moose, bear and deer collected from hunters every year. Thanks to a media and public relations campaign, Hall said, Hunters for the Hungry collected 5,200 pounds of donated meat in 2013. Yet due to increasing interest in the program, Hall said he has been forced to think of other new ways to collect food.
“The need’s getting higher, and we were either getting the same amount or less, so we were trying to figure out a way to increase it,” Hall said. “That’s when the ice fishing derby came up. It’s a lot of the same people. Our hunters are also avid fishermen, so it just made sense to explore that avenue.”
“The question was brought up, why don’t we do fish?” he said. “We’re in a state where the fishing industry’s huge, and we get a minimal amount of fish.”
Hall said he plans to collect fish at Saturday’s Crystal Lake Liberty Family Foundation Ice Fishing Derby in Gray.
“That’s our maiden voyage,” he said. “Yet, compared to Sebago, that’s relatively a small one, but that’s a good place for us to dip our toes into the water and see how this will work.”
At the Sebago Lake derby, Hunters for the Hungry and the Sebago Lake Rotary Club will place 55-gallon drums for fishermen to donate their extra catch. According to Toby Pennels, the chairman of the committee that is organizing the derby this year, in previous years, fishermen have been responsible for figuring out what to do with the caught fish.
“They don’t want the bad publicity of wasted fish, and we’re in the business of salvaging perfectly good food,” Hall said.
Pennels said that lake trout were introduced into Sebago Lake in the early 1970s, leading to increased competition over smelt and a consequent depletion of the lake’s salmon population. He said that biologists employed by the state’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife see the togue-targeting fishing derby on Sebago Lake as a promising way to increase the lake’s salmon population. Now, with Hunters for the Hungry salvaging the excess catch, Pennels said, the derby is contributing to the cycle of ecological sustainability in Cumberland County.
“You’ve got a derby that raises funds for charity,” Pennels said. “It helps with the management of our lakes. And then we’re going to take the fish that we harvest and feed the hungry. I don’t know how it gets any better than that.”
Grant Owen of Windsor poses with a deer that was donated to Hunters for the Hungry, a state program that provides meat to food pantries.Send questions/comments to the editors.
