Colorful fall foliage. Crisp air. Off the grid. Clothes drying near a crackling wood stove. Strong coffee. Camp “cuisine.” Paddling canoes on remote ponds. Uncrowded and unpressured angling for frisky fish.
That’s only a handful of thoughts that come to mind when I think on my recent trip to the northern Maine woods in search of big brook trout on what-some-might-call a classic New England outdoor autumn adventure.
As they say in Maine, it was a wicked pissah! In other words: Awesome.
A friend of mine, Garrett Murch, who decamped Washington, DC, for his native Maine several years ago, was working on his guiding license for fishing, hunting, and recreation, and invited me up to his camp east of Moosehead Lake to fish the local ponds for brookies.
Maine takes its guide licensing process quite seriously, including requiring both written and oral examinations. For Garrett, I think my visit was a bit of a dry run for engagements with future clients after he’s certified.
Being a Virginian for many years, I’m a huge fan of brook trout, especially fly fishing for them in Shenandoah National Park. The beloved wild brookie is also Virginia’s state fish.
These plucky trout (they’re actually from the char family) don’t get very big down this way, with a six-incher being a nice-sized fish–and a nine-inch wild brookie being on the upper end of the size scale.
(Stocked brook trout in Virginia can get much bigger, of course.)
With the prospect of getting into broad-shouldered brookies while paddling across Maine ponds, it didn’t take long for me to say, “Yes, please!” to Garrett’s offer to visit his family’s camp near Kokadjo for a few days in late September.
I arrived at his home in Mount Vernon, Maine mid-afternoon for the ride North. As we approached his camp after a two-hour drive, Garrett turned on his truck’s powerful “ditch lights,” beaming a spray of blinding headlight down the road.
“Moose…,” he said.
The last thing you want to do is tangle with the biggest member of the deer family; if hit with a vehicle at a decent speed, a moose wouldn’t only cause significant damage to your ride, but could slide up your hood into the passenger compartment.
At an average weight of 1,000-pounds–not good.
Fortunately, no menacing moose were around that night as we eased down a secondary road under star-filled skies toward camp. Upon arrival, we lit the wood stove, settled in, and strategized about the next day’s fishing.
This area of northern Maine boasts many native and wild brook trout ponds. Brook trout are a cold water species and the prime times for fishing ponds in this region are mid-May through early-July, and then mid-September through mid-November.
All ponds that are 100-percent naturally reproducing are closed to fishing after September 30th. The state, however, keeps some ponds with brookie populations that are sustained through stocking open through November.
Many of these ponds have little to no suitable spawning habitat, but are food factories with good bug and bait fish forage, allowing for rapid growth. Brookies of three-, four- or five-pounds aren’t unheard of being caught in these ponds.
Some ponds are so far from drivable roads that they’re stocked from the air or by float plane.
It’s also not uncommon to find a pond empty of anglers, but ringed with a flotilla of canoes. Depending on the pond, some of these boats are clearly carried a good distance along well-worn footpaths through the woods and stowed there, leaning against trees near the shore, season after season.
A nostalgic symbol of a bygone era when pond fishing was more in vogue.
I loved fishing out of a canoe, but it can be a bit restrictive. They’re great fun to paddle, gliding effortlessly across the glassy surface of a pond, but you’ll be sitting and casting. Short casts are easy, but “hero casts” are a little more difficult.
During our two days in camp, we hit a number of ponds, hiking through woods ablaze with fall color, to test our angling skills against these brutes. I have to admit, the brookie fishing was a bit different than what I’m used to.
First, finding fish in a big pond can be a challenge. These ponds have little structure outside of the shoreline and an occasional rock or a clump of lily pads, where bugs and bait fish find refuge. Where allowed, some fishers will troll big ponds to find fish.
Plus, I’m used to fishing for brookies in fast water, where, due to sometimes limited forage, these fish need to quickly make a decision to hit a fly or not before its meal gets away. As a result, the takes are often lightning fast.
It’s not that way with still-water brookie fishing.
Since there’s no current in these ponds, the fish may often have plenty of time to take a good, long, hard look at your fly as it suspends in the water or is stripped slowly away.
In other words: There’s no rush to take a fly.
Out on the water, we struggled a bit on the first day of fishing, likely due to a steady rain, wind, and a passing cold front that put the fish down. The next day brought better weather with a mix of sun and clouds.
Still, we battled a little to find fish at first, probing likely spots around the pond with different flies and retrieves. Finally, we noticed brookies gently nosing the surface, leaving behind light ripples and exposing their holds.
Once in position, a quick flick of a cast into those rings with an olive or purple leech on a five-weight rod almost inevitably led to a strike and a fish in the net. Nothing like landing a 14-inch brookie festooned in its fall colors.
As Garrett succinctly explained: “Stillwater fishing is very different from river fishing, making color, shape, size, action, and retrieve pace and rhythm all of great importance.” Once you have that dialed in, the action can be non-stop.
Indeed, we only stopped fishing because the sun was going down, and we needed to store the canoe and hike out a good bit to the truck in the dark. Not that us burly outdoorsmen are afraid of the dark, mind you!
Speaking of dark, Garrett told me there are massive Hexagenia hatches in late June and early July on many of these ponds when these large mayflies become active. These hatches can bring exhilarating surface takes from big trout.
The fishing can be fast and furious for a short period of time–one to two hours after sunset–when the bugs come up through the water column. Garrett swears by his “Murgler” (Murch Gurgler) pattern as the hot fly for this hatch.
I’ll just take his word for it–till I give it a try.
We’d hoped to hit the landlocked salmon run, too, but ran out of time as the season was closing. That means only one thing: I’m going back to the Maine north woods next year for the pond hex hatch, more big brookies, and the salmon run with Guide Garrett.
I’m sure it’ll be wicked pissah just like this year, swayah to Gawd.
Dr. Peter Brookes is an award-winning outdoor writer. He wishes to apologize to Mainers for his cultural misappropriation of their wonderful accent and slang in this piece.
