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Waterville Morning Sentinel
Fishing Trip Planning
Perfect Remedy for Winter Blues
by Ken Allen
Official spring lies eight days away, but
winter 2005 lingers with freezing rain, snowstorms and unseasonable cold, giving
most of us a bad case of the shack-nasty blues.
A great cure for this malady begins with "DeLorme's The
Maine Atlas and Gazetteer," a computer and a telephone. As wind soughs
under the eaves, folks can peruse this book of maps. After finding new places,
they can check nearby sporting camps on the internet and then call up a fishing
buddy or sporting camps, or both, to set a date for the big trip when blue
waters sparkle under clear skies.
Where to go is the perennial question in the Pine Tree State
because we have literally thousands of destinations. We can fish a lifetime and
not hit every one of them. In fact, "DeLorme's Maine Fishing Depth Maps
Lakes and Ponds by County" includes about 960 still waters statewide, and
that figure does not count thousands of rivers, streams and brooks. Also,
DeLorme's depth-maps book leaves out uncharted ponds, which can be little honey
holes.
Another great destination lies in a rather, remote section of
Maine -- Munsungan Lake on
Map 56, C-4 directly north of Baxter State Park. All the tiny brook-trout ponds
around this water will make anglers drool with anticipation. In fact, this area
was attractive enough to generate coverage by PBS television (Made in Maine).
Munsungan itself lies at the foot of steep, wooded hills, one
of the most gorgeous spots that I have fished in Maine. One cherished memory was
fishing on a flat-calm, cloudy evening in the cove, where the inlet from Chase
Pond runs into the lake. Such a remote-looking spot.
Blue-ribbon trout ponds such as the Currier ponds lie
northwest of the inlet, perfect float-tube spots, and Big and Little Reed ponds
to the south are worth investigating. A quick call to any DIF&W fisheries
biologist at the Region G office in Ashland (207-435-3231) can give you an idea
of what to expect in any of these ponds.
In this era of catch-and-release fishing, lots of well-meaning
anglers have little clue as to how much fish weigh. That thought was driven home
this past week while dealing with a fellow who claimed that last summer, 18-inch
landlocked salmon in a particular lake weighed four pounds.
A quick call to David Boucher, a fisheries biologist with the
Region D office in Strong, put that claim to rest. Boucher, the
landlocked-salmon expert for the department, said that last summer, the average
18-inch salmon in this water weighed 2.4-pounds -- nearly half the weight of the
claim. An average landlock must measure 22 inches before hitting the 4-pound
range, and the same is basically true for brown trout.
Even an 18-inch brookie, a fish with a chunky profile, would
not weigh four pounds. On First Currier Pond near Munsungan Lake, I remember a
morning with Bob Cram, of Medway, when I caught three, ultra-fat brookies,
running from 18 to 18 1/4 inches. These football-shaped beauties tipped the
scales at three pounds and a little over.