October Salmon Bonanza

If you saw my YouTube Channel you saw a couple videos of fishing for broodstock Atlantic salmon in the Pemigewasset River.  These fish are excess to the breeding program to restore Atlantic salmon to the Merrimack River watershed and get stocked in April and October.  They are not terribly difficult to catch if you know how and where to target them and have the right flies. (I guess that can be said of just about all fly fishing!) The trick is to cover enough a water with enough flies to determine where they are and what they want to eat on any given day. Some days they seem to want orange, others white, yellow, green or something else. You can't have weight incorporated into the fly or added to the leader, so plenty of mending is the order of the day, with a sink-tip line an added benefit.  I'll be headed back up in a few days to find out what color fly they want and the whereabouts of their current location. Stay tuned.

In addition to the broodstock Atlantics, I was pleased to make the acquaintance of some beautiful Maine landlocked salmon and brook trout earlier this week. (See video.) We stayed at Maynard's in Rockwood.  My fishing buddies (the BSC) have stayed here a number of times and this time we caught more larger fish than any previous trip.  (At least some of us did :-)  My buddy Jim brought his drift boat and one day we drift-fished the East Outlet and the next day we drifted the Kennebce River from The Evergreens Campground in Solon to North Anson. The Evergreens has campsites, cabins, a restaurant and offers a boat launch and shuttle service, which we took advantage of. On the East Outlet most fish were caught on streamers (Wood duck orange and Woods Special were most productive for us.)  While on the Kennebec drift, I caught most fish skating a caddis dry.  Since it was so late in the season, we didn't have to contend with a lot of other anglers, in fact, we were the only boat drifting the Kennebec in Solon. I had not fished this section of river before, and I was really impressed.  In fact, in both sections of river the fish were very healthy looking.  We didn't catch any small salmon, most were 16 to 18 inches and looked to weigh two pounds or more - a lot of fun on a 5 or 6 weight rod. In between all these salmon trips, I had a few beginner-lesson trips to the Squannacook, Nissitissit and Swift Rivers.  All have received a fall stocking, so a lot of people caught their first trout on a fly this month.
This Tuesday night we will be speaking at the Squan-a-tissit TU chapter meeting in Pepperell, MA.  The topic is "The New England Fly Box - Fly patterns and the hatches they match." No admission charge, all are welcome. Hope to see you there!

20th Anniversary trip to Moosehead Lake

One Big Trip down and one to go. The trip to the Moosehead Lake region was fantastic. I have been there numerous times, but never get tired of it. So much good water: Moose River, East Outlet and Roach River, not counting the huge lake and numerous brooktrout ponds. As always, we stayed at Maynard's of Maine sporting camps on the Moose River near the inlet to Moosehead Lake. What do you usually spend for a night in an average roadside motel? 60, 70, 80 or more bucks a night? We paid $65/night for a comfortable room and three amazing meals a day. The prime rib was almost 2-inches thick and done perfectly. But I digress. . . The fishing was almost as good as the accommodations. We arrived Tuesday around noon and after checking our buddies who were fishing the East Outlet, we checked in and drove about a half mile from Maynards to some good pools on the Moose River. Caught a small salmon and a really nice 17+ inch salmon.
The next day Dick and I fished with Bob Dionne, owner of Aardvark Outfitters. What a nice guy and a really good guide. I have been guided in Maine, the Adirondacks, Catskills, Lee's Ferry Arizona, Florida and a couple trips to Montana. Bob is as good as any guide I have taken. I am not a "fish counter" so I don't know exactly how many salmon and brooktrout I caught, but let's say that there were not many lulls in the action. At one spot we stopped to fish from shore and I got two salmon and a brooktrout in four casts with a Henryville Special dry caddis pattern. Here is a picture of Dick with one of the nice salmon he caught.
On Thursday we took a drive around the lake to Kokadjo and the Roach River. Bob had fished the Roach the day before and told us that they were not releasing water yet from First Roach Pond, but any day now they would start drawing down the pond and the salmon would start their spawning run. When we got there I immediately could see that the gate was open and water was roaring down the river and that the salmon and trout were in the river. We started at the dam pool and I got a beautiful 15+ inch brookie. Dick got a small salmon and then we walked down the trail to the Dump Pool. Our friends Dick (the other Dick) and Mack had fished there while we were on the drift trip and Mack had hooked a VERY large salmon that broke him off and proceeded to make a couple more jumps with Mack's nymph rig still in his mouth. A couple anglers were just leaving as we arrived. We both started tossing nymphs and didn't see a fish. Then we moved along to the Warden's Pool. The lone angler was just getting ready to leave as we arrived. He said he had caught two salmon and two trout on nymphs. I tossed my nymph rig into the current and immediately got a jarring strike and I proceeded to break the fish off with my King Kong hook set. Soon I had two other good strikes, but didn't hook-up. Dick didn't have much luck either, so we headed back to the East Outlet (Kennebec River as it emerges from Moosehead Lake and flows to Indian Pond.) We did pretty well there and Dick caught a lot of fish in the last hour and a half before we had to eat the nightly feast at Maynard's and listen to Dick D's twentieth anniversary telling of "the greatest sea story ever told."