Wilderness Waters

Mid May 2012 Maine fishing report

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 01:10:52 +0000

We went from the extreme drought condition in April to borderline flood levels in some of Maine’s rivers and streams in about a one week span of time. In Southern Maine the fish are biting well in the streams as the levels dropped a bit this weekend to slightly high but clear and fishable. Hatches of mayflies are coming off when the weather is right.

In Northern Maine the smelts turned on two weeks ago and then put the brakes on last weekend, hopefully they start running again or it was a short season. I suspect they are done though because I have heard of people finding suckers and fallfish already in the rivers and hitting flies, and once they move in it means the smelts are done. When the suckers move in sometimes you can find trout feeding on sucker eggs, but it is not easy if you don’t know where to look. I like to use this time to troll lakes and ponds in the northern parts of Maine. The black flies won’t be out yet and once the smelt run is over a lot of the bigger fish move back into the lakes and ponds until the rivers warm and start producing good hatches.

Here is a nice brown trout caught on the Kennebec River in Central Maine, this guy was about 17 inches and caught on a nymph:

Early May Fishing Report, 2012

admin — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:04:43 +0000

It has been raining a lot this past week and that has really improved the fishing on the lakes and streams around the State. In the northern places like the Greenville area and the Rangeley area the brook trout and salmon are starting to migrate from the lakes to the rivers with this surge of water. Down in Southern Maine for a the trout in the streams had started to get very selective due to the bright sunny days and low water, but with this rain they have put the feed bags back on and if you can get out now is the time to do so. Try muddler minnows and wooly buggers in all different sizes and colors (I like olive or brown the best, in size eight) and swing all over likely spots using floating line and you should get a hit if there are any fish around. The state just stocked a lot of browns in some of the local streams as well.

Fishing with my daughter

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:39:59 +0000

My daughter Ella is now just over 3 years old and fishing with her is often a 10 minute outing that ends with her getting bored and throwing rocks in the water or asking to go home. But every once in a while we hit it just right and catch a bunch of fish and she has a blast. Saturday was one of those days where we had a blast. My friend Peter has a small pond on his property that has sunfish and hornpout in it. You would think that these are trash fish, but to a 3 year old fish are fish, if I get excited, she gets excited. Saturday we fished for at least an hour and we must have landed at least 20 fish, all between 4 and 10 inches. At about 15 fish and 40 minutes I asked if it was time to go home? Ella’s response was, “I want to stay for 5 more fish!” I managed to snap a couple photos of the action in the last few minutes.

And at the end we have Ella showing me that she can carry both poles because she is a big girl.

Southern Maine Fishing Report for mid April

admin — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:08:43 +0000

If you haven’t heard, Southern Maine, and most of Maine for that mater, is currently suffering from a severe lack of rain. Typically this time of year the streams and rivers are too high to fish due to the spring run-off, but this year due to a mild winter and no rain for at least a month now things are not looking good. Peter and I visited a pond, a river, and small stream late last week to check things out for ourselves. Our first stop was a small pond that holds some trophy brook trout. I have caught up to 5 pound trout on this pond in the past, but on this day the water was still pretty cold and not much was happening. We did manage to catch one decent fish, and we really enjoyed the quiet calm morning as two loons fished around us as well. You can see from the picture that the pond was like a mirror.

Next we moved on to the Great Works River, but the water was extremely low and with polarized glasses you could see that there was nothing but Chubs in most of the pools, so we didn’t stay long. After that we decided to explore a section of a small stream that crosses through a large portion of North Berwick before joining the Great Works River. This stream was very low too, but with a little hiking and exploring we found both some stocked trout and some wild trout, ranging in sizes from 7 inches to 13 inches. Here is a shot of the average size we were catching and what is typical for most of Southern Maine streams this time of year:

We were at it from about 3:30 AM, so by 2 PM Peter and I were starting to get a little worn out. After a short break on the side of this nice little stream we decided to call it a day.

Winter 2012

admin — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 01:21:08 +0000

I didn’t get as much ice fishing in this year as I usually do, but I still got out some and had a lot of fun with friends and family and took a lot of pictures. Here is a summary of this winters outings, fish of all shapes and sizes:

Changes

admin — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 02:04:27 +0000

I have been doing some re-evaluating of what I want to offer for guiding in the future. For a while now I have been guiding all over Maine, but this has been taxing on our family since we moved to Southern Maine. Now places like Rangeley and Greenville are 3+ hours north of us. I have always been partial to these areas because the fishing is so good. But after driving up there several times this year I have decided I can’t keep doing so. I have decided to guide primarily in Southern Maine. I have completely redone the Guided Fishing page and eliminated all mentioning of Northern Maine. Yes I will still guide up North if it works with my schedule, but that won’t be very often. For now I am going to focus on Southern Maine and try to expand my base down here.

Southern Maine streams are cooling off

admin — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 23:46:46 +0000

This weekend our good friends Dave, Jessie, and their daughter Maggie visited with us. We have been friends with Dave and Jessie for over 10 years now, but since we moved 3.5 hours south of them 2 years ago, we haven’t seen them much. Just last month they moved 2 hours closer and Dave and I both love to fish and hang out, so I am pretty excited that they moved closer. We fished for trout Monday morning in York County, Monday being the 3rd day in a row of 85+ degree weather with only 72 degree nights. I had little expectations for most of the local rivers so we tried a stream I know of that has some nice spring holes. We found a couple trout and some 67 degree water, but the water was low and the trout were very picky so we moved on to the Little Ossipee River after a little while. There we found the water to be low as well and the water was a tad bit warmer at 69 degrees, but I could feels some cool springs seeping in as we wet waded down the river, so I knew we were going to find some fish. I think in all we landed around 10 brook trout, ranging in size from 8 to 12 inches. We also caught over a hundred chubs, a yellow perch, a smallmouth bass, a largemouth bass, and we saw a pickerel. I forgot the camera so here are some pictures from other times I visited this river and some others like it to give you an idea of what type of water we were fishing and what size the trout typically are.

Hurricane Relief

admin — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:26:16 +0000

For several months most of Southern Maine’s small stream trout fishing has been off due to low water and high temps. 55 degree nights and a good dose of rain from the recent hurricane has brought things back to decent fishing, but not great. Water temps are still a little high during the middle of the day, so you might have your best luck at dawn. Plus we only got 2 inches of rain locally and that isn’t much for how dry this summer has been. This week I fished a stream for an hour that is only 10 minutes from where I live. There are both wild and stocked trout in there. I found this guy willing to bite a stimulator dragged on the surface. It was 3 PM and the water was 67 degrees and it was a beautiful day. There are a decent number of fish in this stream that hold over through the summer, but we need things to cool down some more before things start to really get good. I also used this as a chance to try out a new camera I purchased a month ago. Some photos from the day:

Kevin’s giant brook trout

admin — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:24:49 +0000

Kevin recently emailed me his picture of a big brook trout he caught while we were up in the Rangeley area in June. The fish was very strong and did not want to pose for the picture, so it is not the best shot. Kevin just got this one photo and then quickly released the fish. I think this was Kevin’s biggest brook trout ever caught. Way to go man!

My stuff is now on ebay

admin — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 15:39:37 +0000

Back story: One of the reasons I fly fish is for the challenge. I like trying to fool a large wise old fish with an offering that I tied myself just for that particular situation. Typical of a Mainer and a home grown fly fisherman I also like to fish with under sized and inexpensive gear so that the fight is incredible and that much more rewarding when I land the fish. The problem with this is that each year I get better and get into bigger fish, but my equipment has not grown up in size or quality at the same pace. As a result I have limited equipment to offer clients, and this year I watched a client lose a really nice fish on one of my lightweight setups, and it was partially the fault of the gear. The problem was the reel was way undersized for the situation.

With that in mind, I decided that if I am going to be guiding people in the Rangeley area, where 5 pound brook trout are becoming quite regular on my trips, that my gear needs a serious upgrade. As a result I am unloading a lot of my gear that I have accumulated over the years and no longer have a use for, or I just don’t use it that often. Some of it I have already sold by word of mouth, and the rest is on ebay, or will be going on ebay soon. The proceeds of the sales will go towards the best Orvis setup money can buy, because that is what my clients deserve. For this fall season I will be offering my clients the use of Helios rods matched with Mirage reels lined with Wonderline. I have been using some Orvis gear for a couple years now and have been very pleased so I am going to go all out.

If you are interested in any of my gear, check it out on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Temple-Forks-6-2-wt-rod-reel-Orvis-Wonderline-/160635805009?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2566a3dd51

http://cgi.ebay.com/St-Croix-Triumph-8-6-5wt-Fly-Rod-Reel-and-Line-/160636354992?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2566ac41b0

http://cgi.ebay.com/L-L-Bean-Quest-6-wt-8-6-2pc-Fly-Rod-/160635895744?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2566a53fc0