The Fisherman's Guide to Maine

The Fisherman’s

Guide to Maine

BY EARLE DOUCETTE

To G. P. D.

Simon Peter saith unto them, I go afishing;

they say unto him, We also go with thee.

JOHN 21:3

Author’s Note

No book about fishing in the State of Maine would be complete without mention of a man who has devoted a lifetime to advising anglers (and sportsmen generally) about the kind of sensible equipment on which they can thoroughly rely. I’ve used tackle and other items of this man’s choice for more than a quarter century, and I know that countless others down the years have done likewise. Since he’s a veteran out-doorsman himself and a man of great ingenuity, he has devised many outstanding improvements in the things fishermen need and use. For his many services to outdoorsmen everywhere I am glad to pay this little tribute to one of Maine’s most respected citizens—Mr. L. L. Bean of Freeport.

E.D.

Contents

TABLE OF MAPS

Part One: What to Catch and How to Catch Them

CHAPTER 1: In General

  1. The Cold-Water Fish: Trout, Atlantic Salmon, Landlocked Salmon

  2. Effects of Seasonal and Temperature Changes on Trout and Salmon

  3. Food Habits of Cold-Water Fish

  4. Fishing at Thermocline or the Sunken Fly

  5. Live Bait

  6. Nymph Fishing

  7. Trolling—Methods and Equipment

  8. Fly-casting, an Art and a Science: The Dry Fly, Wet Fly and Streamer. Lake and Stream Methods

  9. Accommodations—How to Get There—What to Take—What’s a Maine Fishing Trip Like?

10. Guides

11. Black Flies? Yes, in Season—Repellents and Protection

12. Equipment

13. Game Laws

14. The Woman Fisherman

CHAPTER 2: The Brook Trout

  1. Of Flies and Other Lures

  2. Your Rod and Other Equipment

  3. Stream and Brook Fishing

  4. The Spinning Rig

CHAPTER 3: The Landlocked Salmon

CHAPTER 4: Atlantic-Salmon Fishing

CHAPTER 5: Bass, Pickerel and Perch

  1. Bass

  2. Pickerel

  3. Perch

CHAPTER 6: Salt-Water Fishing

  1. Tuna

  2. Pollock, Mackerel, Cod

  3. Shore Fishing

Part Two: Where to Catch Them

CHAPTER 7: The St. John River–Fish River Lakes Region

  1. The St. John River Section

  2. The Red River Country

  3. The Musquacook–Munsungun Country

  4. The Allagash River Section

  5. The Fish River Lakes Section

CHAPTER 8: The Moosehead Lake–Katahdin Region

  1. The Moosehead Section

  2. The Katahdin Section

  3. The Patten Country

  4. The Bingham–Jackman Country

  5. Flying to Backwoods Waters

  6. Special Laws and Regulations

CHAPTER 9: The Rangeley Region

  1. Laws and Regulations

CHAPTER 10: The Washington County Region

  1. Laws and Regulations

CHAPTER 11: The Belgrade Lakes–Kennebec Lakes Region

  1. The Belgrade Lakes Region

  2. The Kennebec Lakes Section

  3. Laws and Regulations

CHAPTER 12: The Sebago Region

  1. Laws and Regulations

APPENDIX I: Maine Inland Fishing Laws

APPENDIX II: Fish and Game Wardens

APPENDIX III: Maine Publicity Bureau Offices

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

Table of Maps

The St. John River Section

The Red River Country

The Musquacook–Munsungun Country

The Fish River Lakes Section

The Moosehead Section

The Katahdin Section

The Patten Country

The Bingham–Jackman Country

The Rangeley Region

The Washington County Region (Lower Half)

(Upper Half)

The Belgrade Lakes–Kennebec Lakes Region

The Sebago Region

Part One: What to Catch and How to Catch Them

1

In General

With the coming of spring a holiday spirit spreads through Maine. The long northern winter is over at last and the red buds of the maples are swelling. In the swamps the frogs lift their voices in song, and in the woodlands the birds go about their housebuilding. Borne on the soft spring breeze are exciting scents: the smell of the good earth, the fragrance of the pines and balsams, the delicate perfume of new grass, the aroma of sweet fern.

But best of all, the ice, after hanging on like grim death, has left the waters and it is time to go fishing again.

For months the fisherman has awaited this happy time with what patience he could muster. While March blizzards howled around his house he lovingly overhauled his fishing gear piece by piece. He oiled and re-oiled his reels until their voice was a gentle purr. He added new raiment to the battered fly that had taken that big trout last summer. He inspected his rods for the hundredth time, even viewing them through a glass to make sure there was not the slightest flaw in them.

Before the year is out he and 150,000 like him, a third of them from other states, will have fished Maine waters. There, during the spring, summer and fall, they, like fishermen everywhere, will experience a joy and an uplifting of the spirit that is not granted to the followers of any other pastime.

Many have tried but no one has succeeded in describing adequately the enchantment that fishing has for so many.

Men were whipping the streams of Macedonia with crude artificial flies long before the coming of Christ, and love for the gentle art of fishing has woven itself like a golden thread through the tapestry of the centuries. The bond that welds fishermen together recognizes neither time nor distance nor borders. It transcends race and creed and color.

The wisest man cannot make reluctant fish bite. He cannot pit his intelligence against that of a fish, because a fish has none. But it possesses marvelous abilities man lost when he became a thinking being. A wonderful instinct warns the trout of danger, whether it be in the shape of a vagrant shadow that floats across the pool or an insect floating downstream that seems only too real. And there is nothing so capricious and baffling as a game fish. He is here today and somewhere else tomorrow. One hour he feeds on the surface and the next he won’t come near it. He will take the fisherman’s favorite fly in the morning and in the afternoon he will turn up his patrician nose at it. A man can win in a contest against another man because men think alike, even though some may be more subtle than others. But to win a victory over a fish one must defeat the unknown. A good fisherman seldom kills a fish. He is content with bringing it to net. He removes the hook carefully and returns the gallant creature to its element, much as one returns a sword to a fallen antagonist and tells him to go his way in peace.

When this country was new our forefathers lived in a fisherman’s paradise. The best of fishing was no farther away than the stream that ran past the cabin door. All around were a wealth of waters that harbored fabulous numbers of many species.

But, like men through all the ages, they believed that there was no end to nature’s largess and so they killed indiscriminately, even using Atlantic salmon, the most magnificent of all game fish, to fertilize their corn. Impassable dams were built that prevented fish from reaching their spawning grounds. The great forests that stored water against the droughts of the summer were mercilessly hacked away so that streams dried up and the fish population perished.

This massacre of our natural resources continued until only a few years ago when, finally awakened to what was going on, we looked about us aghast. It was plain that if the trend continued the day was not far distant when there would be nothing left to fish and the art of fishing, beloved by so many, would become only a memory.

Most of us now are fully aware of the crying need for conservation and propagation. In our generation enormous strides have been taken to retrieve and preserve our resources. The road ahead of us is a long one but at least we have started to travel it.

Even at the lowest ebb there were some states that, for one reason or another, had not suffered as badly as others. They were the last strongholds of wild life in the nation. They became the goal for fishermen everywhere.

Most of these states are off the beaten path, well removed from the big centers of population. The annual arrival of hordes of fishermen brought home the fact that here was a valuable source of revenue that could be developed. Fishermen spend money for licenses, guides, accommodations, tackle and many other things. In the aggregate they spend millions of dollars. So the residents of these states were given another incentive for conserving and propagating their game fish—a financial one. Game fishing, if managed properly, can become a valuable crop, one that can be harvested year after year.

All of these states, alert at last to their opportunities, have taken increasingly longer steps toward supplying better fishing. Research is going on to find out more about the habits of fish. Giant hatcheries have been built, or are being built, to augment the natural hatch. And so at last it seems that we are awake to the urgency of undoing the wrongs of the past. If the present trend continues, and it seems obvious that it will, these states will remain forever places where the fisherman will always find good fishing. Maine is one of these states.

A glance at a map will show that if the border of the United States and Canada had been drawn in a straight line from Vermont to the sea, most of Maine would belong to Canada. Maine’s neighbor to the west is the Province of Quebec and on the east the Province of New Brunswick. Nova Scotia lies to the east and south. A resident in the northern half of Maine has to travel south-southwest to go to Montreal.

Maine, with her Canadian neighbors, is a part of a great peninsula that juts out into the waters of the Gulf of Maine, the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy.

Fishing has been one of the chief assets of the economy of this part of North America since the coming of the white man. Long before the landing of the pilgrims, hardy Breton fishermen from across the ocean were fishing the offshore waters of America for cod, which they dried and salted on the beaches and took back to feed the hungry of the homeland. To this day Maine is the principal source of cod and other groundfish for America. Hundreds of millions of sardines are canned annually by Canadian and Maine canners who harvest the hordes of these little fish that swarm into the bays. Great schools of blue-fin tuna and smaller mackerel invade the offshore waters in the spring and summer.

The rivers of Labrador, Quebec, New Brunswick and Maine are the only places on the continent where Atlantic salmon may be caught. Inland fishing, which attracts tens of thousands of fishermen, is of great economic importance to Maine, some of the other New England states and the Canadian maritime provinces. So many factors are involved that officials are unable to say exactly how much money is gained from sport fishing, but $25 million annually would be a fair estimate in my opinion.

As this book is about Maine, let us stick exclusively to that state from now on, bearing in mind, if you wish, that it resembles the rest of the great area of which it is a part.

Statistically, Maine has an area of 33,040 square miles, its greatest length being somewhat over 300 miles and its greatest width about 250. Noteworthy is the fact that of its total land area of 19,865,000 acres, 16,880,000 acres are wooded. And one-tenth of the total area of the state is water.

Eons ago this whole area was scratched and gouged by a vast glacier that advanced and receded over it and so it is a region of incessantly recurring hills and small mountains, of lakes, ponds, rivers and brooks almost without end. One is never out of sight of a hill, seldom out of sight of water.

Western and northwestern Maine is a broad plateau from 500 to 1,000 feet above sea level that slopes ever so gently down to the eastern, central and southern sections where the elevation is only slightly above the level of the sea. Western, northwestern and most of northern Maine is predominantly forested. In northwestern Maine there is a forest tract that is the largest east of the Rockies. Maine’s population is small—only 900,000—and most of the citizens live in the south, central and eastern parts. Roughly two-thirds of the state consists of forests; the rest of farm lands, cities, towns and the ever-present stretches of woods in between.

Draining Maine are four great rivers—the St. John, the Penobscot, the Kennebec and the Androscoggin—and twice as many lesser ones. A few short generations ago these were among the best known rivers on the continent, for they were the headquarters of the lumber industry when Maine was the world’s leading producer of lumber. The Penobscot, for example, is over 300 miles long in its twistings and turnings. Its headwaters are deep in the northwestern forest. At its source it is fed by innumerable brooks and streams and by the waters of lakes and ponds. Along every few miles in its journey to the southern seacoast it is fattened by other streams, brooks, lakes and ponds. With its neighbors to the north, east and west, the Penobscot forms an almost incredible network of waterways, much as the tiny capillaries in the body unite with others to form, at last, the bigger arteries.

As the Penobscot, or any of the other rivers, progresses from its source to its mouth, it first traverses unbroken wilderness, then small clearings, then little forest towns, then farm lands, then larger towns and, finally, the larger cities nearer the ocean. Its tributaries are, besides brooks and streams, the lakes and ponds that lie in the wilderness and the similar bodies of water that are very close to towns and cities. Maine’s waters are so numerous and so well distributed that a seaplane flying over the state at a reasonable altitude is always within gliding distance of a safe landing. There are fish of some description in literally all waters in Maine.

This wide distribution of waters is what makes Maine, and its sister states and provinces, unique from the fisherman’s standpoint. He can fish anywhere he happens to be in the length and breadth of the state. Of course fishing is better in some places than it is in others but in some cases it is good indeed very close to the largest cities.

The waters in the plateau region in the north, northwest and west are inhabited almost exclusively by the cold-water fish—trout and salmon—because the deep and cold water is to their liking. The southern, central and eastern regions, where the lakes are generally shallower, are where the fisherman finds bass, perch and pickerel. However, this rule is not an invariable one. There are many fine trout and salmon waters in the latter sections as well as waters that harbor both cold and warm-water fishes.

Maine has hundreds of miles of brook, stream and river fishing of varied degrees of excellence but by and large the best fishing is to be had on the lakes and ponds. This, of course, is just a general rule. Exceptions will be noted in chapters to come.

Visitors to Maine are often surprised upon visiting a body of water designated as a pond to find that it is actually a lake many miles long. The early residents of Maine who named the state’s waters evidently used the terms lake and pond interchangeably, and, often without rhyme or apparent reason, there are many instances where two bodies of water of equal size lying close together will be designated differently—one will be a pond and the other a lake. The popular conception of a pond is of a very small body of water, often artificially formed. In Maine, however, a pond may be anywhere from half a mile to seven or eight miles long. This is noted in passing so that the reader won’t be misled when he runs across the word pond into believing that it is a small body of water he can cast across.

1. The Cold-Water Fish: Trout, Atlantic Salmon, Landlocked Salmon.

The most important of Maine fresh-water game fish are the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), the landlocked salmon (Salmo sebago), the brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), the lake trout (Christivomer namaycush), the brown trout (Salmo trutta), the small-mouthed bass (Micropterus dolomieu), the chain pickerel (Esox niger), the white perch (Morone americana) and the yellow perch (Perca flavescens).

Along the Maine coast, which has a tideline of more than two thousand miles, the fisherman will find blue-fin tuna, mackerel, cod, pollock, flounders, cunners and some striped bass.

Succeeding chapters will deal with these fish in detail—their lives, habits and how to catch them—but in the interests of continuity it is necessary to say a few words about some of them now so that the reader will get a well-rounded picture of what Maine has to offer the fisherman.

Beginning with the more humble of the fresh-water species, let it be said that Maine has too many white and yellow perch. They exist literally by the tens of millions in Maine waters and it is no trick to catch them until the fisherman grows tired of doing so. It is fun to catch them, but in many waters they are so numerous that they consume most of the food supply, making existence something of a problem for the larger game fish. There are a great many pickerel in Maine waters, but they don’t constitute the problem that the perches do.

I am not a bass fisherman, but friends who have fished everywhere for these fish tell me that Maine bass fishing is at least as good as will be found anywhere, so I’ll take their word for it.

Sport fishing along the Maine coast, with the exception of tuna fishing, has never been developed to any great extent and a great deal of research remains to be done to find out where is the best fishing for different species. For example, surf fishing, so popular elsewhere, is done nowhere in Maine; as far as I know, no one has tried it. As will be told in the chapter on salt-water fishing, there are boats at various points that take the fishermen out, but there is little organization of facilities as yet.

I have purposely left discussion of the cold-water fish for last because of their importance and because so comparatively few fishermen throughout the country know much about them. This book is not written for any particular group of fishermen, but for all who fish, and if those who are thoroughly familiar with the cold-water fish feel that I am plowing over old ground, let them remember that others are not so fortunate. Still, no matter how familiar you may be with trout and salmon I feel that perhaps there are some things that I will write that will be new, interesting, and of help to you. At least I hope so.

There are comparatively few places in this nation where the cold-water fish occur in great abundance and Maine is one of them. Nevertheless, if those who come to Maine to catch a trout or salmon* stick to methods employed with warm-water fish they are apt to be disappointed.

Every year I receive hundreds of letters from fishermen asking where to go trout or salmon fishing, and I must admit that I am a little impatient with the writers because they don’t seem to realize that the sport of fishing has more than one dimension to it. I wish that more fishermen would learn that when to go fishing is fully as important as where to go. I would far rather fish a poor lake at the right time than an excellent lake at the wrong time.

Because of this oversight many fisherman go to Maine, as well as to other states, and have no luck whatever when, with better planning, they could have had a trip that was memorable indeed. Even when fishing is not at its best, the fisherman can often have a measure of success if he employs different methods from his customary ones.

No one can say that fishing will be at its best at such-and-such a lake on such-and-such a day in such-and-such a month. However it is possible, at least as far as trout and salmon are concerned, to give the fisherman a yardstick to follow. It isn’t a perfect yardstick, but it is far better than none at all. Because the matter is of such paramount importance I believe it best to go into it in detail here and now.

For the past decade the Research Division of the Maine Department of Fisheries and Game, like similar organizations elsewhere, has been busy testing and surveying the waters of the state to find out scientifically which are best suited to the health and welfare of the trout and salmon. This is important work, as it does away with the hit-or-miss fish-planting methods of the past when thousands of hatchery-reared fish were dumped into waters where they had no chance to survive. As a by-product they have unearthed much fascinating information that can be employed with profit by the fisherman who wants to know when and how to fish for the best results.

Let the reader remember that the work that has been done concerns itself with the cold-water fish, which are not as tolerant of changes in their environment as their warm-water brethren; they need more oxygen and they can’t stand the high temperatures that the latter can. If the reader tries to apply these facts to the warm-water varieties, he does so on his own hook and he may be doomed to disappointment. True, some things might apply to a degree, but I don’t know for sure and I don’t believe anyone else will until more research has been conducted.

The behavior of fish, particularly the cold-water varieties, has always intrigued and baffled fishermen and, as is often the case when man runs up against something he doesn’t understand, some of us endow fish with semi-mystical qualities. Many believe that in some mysterious way the lives of fish are governed by