It's cold outside, but cozy for ice fishermen on the Exeter

A box of leftover pizza. Check. Portable radio. Check. Coleman lantern. Check.

With the necessary supplies within reach, Bruce Caillouette settled into a wooden chair in his blue and yellow portable shack in Exeter, N.H. , wrestled a wriggling bloodworm onto a hook, and answered the question that every ice fisherman has answered a thousand times before.

"Cold? Not really. It gets so warm in here I usually fish in a T-shirt."

Ice fishing is a pastime usually associated with the ponds and rivers of the great white frozen north. Usually, but not always. Caillouette, a burly, 48-year-old Danville road agent and his adult son, David, were angling for smelt and tommycod recently on the frozen Exeter River -- a snowball toss from the art galleries and boutiques downtown.

"It's really a lovely spot," said Kendall Greenier of Exeter, who relocated his portable shack, or bob-house, next to the Caillouettes' from a spot downriver after the Valentine's Day snowstorm. "At night you can see the glow of the lanterns in the fish shacks and the lights of buildings downtown. And there are a lot of good restaurants nearby."

When the Exeter River froze during the early February cold snap, a half-dozen multicolored bob-houses appeared on the river after a long absence.

"The river didn't freeze over last year," said the elder Caillouette.

Pressure ridges of ice crunched up to the banks of the river, and open water was visible beneath the wooden gangplank that allowed access to the ice from the town parking lot. A young woman and two toddlers looked on from the town landing while a flock of gulls stood at a frozen inlet, where the brick buildings of the former mill town wrap around the river.

"This is a tidal river, and you have to keep alert," said Greenier. "Sometimes you can hear the water running underneath you and the ice crunches as it rises and falls with the tide. And there are holes under the snow from bob-houses that have been moved. You have to be careful not to fall through. "

How does Greenier know when the ice is safe to drag out his homemade, silver-colored bob-house? "I wait until I see somebody else out here."

Greenier, 50, said he's caught tommycod and a lot of smelt on the river, and he has seen other fishermen occasionally catch striped bass. He's been ice fishing since he was a youngster in Presque Isle , Maine.

While the Caillouettes baited their hooks, Greenier began cutting holes through the ice beside his relocated fishing shack. He muscled holes using a 5-foot-long steel chisel he welded himself, cut two squares in the ice with a hand-saw, and lifted 18-inch-deep blocks of ice out of the water with tongs that looked as if they came from an antique store.

"I'm old school," said Greenier, whose family once rented ice houses on Great Bay. The Exeter resident works as a crane operator, primarily in Boston. "Ice fishing is particularly popular with construction workers, who are used to being outside and have a lot of time off in the winter," said Caillouette.

Greenier said the fish come in and out on the tide. Though he was out on the ice at midday on the Saturday after Valentine's Day, he usually goes fishing at night. "I've been out here when the wind chill was 20 below," he said. "But I'm never cold. The walls of my shack are made of half-inch insulation and the heat of the lantern keeps me warm. My wife thinks I'm crazy, but it gets me outdoors in the winter and it's fun."

The Caillouettes use the same system to determine if the ice is safe. If they see a bob-house out on the ice, they transport their fishing shack down to the river on a pickup truck and haul the 200-pound structure onto the ice with a sled.

Their two-seater bob-house has 10 fishing lines that descend from pulleys on its walls. Caillouette brought along a few fishing poles in a wooden backpack that leaned against the bob-house and kept a perforated metal ladle handy to scoop ice off the fishing hole.

He said he's been ice fishing for decades and once caught 417 smelts in one night about 15 years ago, before fishing limits were imposed. After he cleans the fish, he covers them in flour and fries them. Those he can't eat, he stores in a chest freezer at home.

That said, he adjusted his Coleman lantern, tuned the radio to a local rock station, watched as his son lowered yet another line into the river and muttered, "Let the waiting begin."