Category Archives: Fishing Report

Rangeley Area Ice-out

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Ice-out in the Rangeley area is finally here. Later than the last several years but pretty typical if you look back over the records of the last 50 years or so. It has been a strange spring with very little precipitation and day after day of blue sky without a cloud. Streams in Central and Southern Maine are very low for this time of year, but in the Rangeley area there was snowpack with lots of moisture content so the melting snow has provided plenty of water for the rivers. As soon as the water temperatures rise a bit the smelt will be on the move and so will the fish. The key to fishing the rivers this time of year when the water is cold is not to move flies too quickly. Dead drifting streamers or providing motion and movement while keeping the streamer in the same place is often the ticket to success.
Some of the most popular places get pretty crowded but it is unpredictable. Sometimes anglers anticipate the weekend is going to be crowded so they hit their favorite spots during the week and Sunday turns out to be empty of significant angler traffic.
I will be out almost every day now trying to hit the smelt runs. My guiding days are filling up but I do have some days available the week of May 20th. Contact me if you are interested.

While waiting for the ice to go out, I travelled to upstate NY to try some steelhead fishing. Check out my video on YouTube under “Playing Large Steelhead” mainelyflyfishing.com to see how I did. Yes, it was cold.
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I am looking for a cover photo for my book which will (finally) be published this fall. If anyone has a high quality photo of a person fly fishing with a backdrop that shouts northern New England, I would like to see it. It would preferably show some action – fly casting, fighting a fish, landing a fish – that sort of thing.

I will post again soon.

Hot October Fishing

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I don’t know if it is due to global climate change or some other factor but October’s are definitely warmer than they used to be in Western Maine. I remember years ago October’s were pretty cold – low 20’s at night and low 40’s during the day. This year in October lows were routinely in the high 30’s and highs were in the 50’s – nice fishing weather, and the fish cooperated.
Fishing at Upper Dam was excellent this October, good weather and low water flows made the fish accessible and active. The last weekend of the month brought heavy caddis hatches and brought the fish up. Knowledgable anglers were having 20 fish afternoons. Even without a hatch, fish were concentrated in the moving water at the tail of the pool and were very catchable among the rocks with European nymphing techniques. A few were quite large. I had one very wide salmon on for a while – I got to see him quite well when he jumped head high just ten feet away from me – until I had to work around a rock to follow him downstream. One slight dip with the rod tip gave him a bit of slack, and he was gone.
Fishing in southern Maine also was good as Maine Fish and Wildlife continued stocking several local rivers and holdover fish started appearing again. The brown trout and brook trout the state stocks in the fall are large, healthy, and have very good quality fins and colors. I fished to rising browns in both the Pleasant and Royal rivers in October. On one foggy, drizzly, and warm afternoon a blue-winged olive hatch occurred on the Royal below the old mill, and it was fun trying to catch browns on top. I also just missed a very large fish (sea run brown) that boiled the water around my nymph as it ended its drift and was swinging to the surface.
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During the late fall/early winter season, I continue the patterns and tactics that I used in the fall. In many rivers and streams, although the brook trout spawning is probably completed, the landlocked salmon and brown trout spawning is still continuing and those species will aggressively attack colorful streamers. This is particularly true in rivers and streams that stay warmer. Any river flowing out of a large lake will stay warmer because it takes more cold days for the large volume of lake water to cool. Last year, the upper Presumpscott River that orginates from Sebago Lake had temperatures in the upper 40’s, with brown trout still spawning in late-November, even though there was snow on the ground. I guided two people on the Presumpscott last year on the day after Thanksgiving, and they both hooked salmon and trout while nymphing (red copper johns) and wet fly fishing (partridge and orange).

mid summer fishing

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The dog days of summer mean that one has to try different places and techniques to catch trout or salmon. Many of our favorite spots in June become too warm to fish successfully in late July or early August.
One of my favorite mid-summer places to fish is Cupsuptic Stream, both above and below the falls. This small stream stays cool all summer and the trout stay active. It isn’t a big stream and the runs and pools are not large so neither are the trout- they range from 4 to 8 inches with occasional bigger ones – but they are as beautiful as little jewels and have surprising yellow bellies. They almost look like a cross between a brook trout and a golden trout. The best way to fish is to wade wet and fish a 2 or 3 weight, with your favorite attractor dry fly, and unless you snag it in a tree, you can fish the same fly all day. You will probably get over 20 strikes in an afternoon.
The Upper Connecticut is another great mid-summer locale because water flows from a bottom-release dam and stays cold all summer. It is only an hour and change from the Kennebago area by car. I usually launch my kayak and paddle both up and down stream as I look for rises. Action tends to pick up towards evening when the light dims. I usually catch at least 6 fat energetic rainbows on ants or caddis imitations with the occasional brook trout or brown trout. Here is another excerpt from my upcoming book…
Fishing mountain streams at higher elevations is another possible summer strategy. I love to travel to the Presidentials in New Hampshire and hike up the myriad of trails that parallel small streams running down the side of the mountain. The water is clear and there is no algae, mud, or plant life of any kind because of the scouring it receives during the spring run off. It is rock, sand, water, and a few tree limbs. That’s it. It’s the kind of small stream that Disney tries to recreate in its theme parks or expensive resort landscaping but can never quite pull off. There are many mountain streams throughout Northern New England. I have enjoyed fishing the small streams in what is referred to as the” northeast kingdom” of Vermont. Staying in Vermont for a moment, during a normal summer, the feeder streams of the Batten Kill River can fish well for small brookies. Beautiful small streams also cascade off Mount Mansfield (also in Vermont), as well as the Mahoosic Mountains, Mount Katahdin, Saddleback, and Sugarloaf Mountains (in Maine).
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The gear is simple. A 3-weight 6 or 7-foot rod and a small fly box filled with a few Elk Hair Caddis, Parachute Adams, small Muddlers, and bucktail streamers are all that you need. There are no mysteries here. If the fish are present they will reveal themselves. If you don’t catch something quickly, keep moving. Sometimes a steam will have become too acidic to support trout. Other times it has been over fished.

Smelt gone – Suckers starting soon

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The smelt run ended a little over a week ago but people caught a lot of big fish in the Rangeley area. It seemed like the smelt run lasted longer than normal and since the water was lower almost everywhere, it was easy to reach the big trout and salmon that were feeding on the smelt. I saw more large (from 2.5 to 4 pound) trout caught in a few days than I have ever seen. I guided a guy who caught 6-8 (I lost count) trout over 2 pounds in two days. I fished several days as well and caught two trout on successive casts that were over four pounds. Of course my video camera ran out of memory right before I landed them so I have no photographic evidence – but my buddy saw them. Most all the fish were caught on a certain smelt imitation pattern that not too many people use. But people were catching them on a variety of patterns. When I get a break from guiding I will post videos of the smelt run so you can get a sense of it. Because of the early warm weather there were some good hatches as well of blue-winged olives and plenty of fish caught on dry flies and small nymphs that imitate blue-winged olives. The Rangeley River and the Maggalloway river above Parmachenee (have to stay at Bosebuck camps to fish there) had anglers with 15 fish afternoons. The Rangeley river had some really fat and strong fish that fought hard, although I did better nymphing than with dry flies, but the fish were rising.

Now it is time for the suckers to start their spawning run and if one is in the correct spot, nymphing with sucker egg patterns can be very productive. Here is an excerpt from my book on the subject…

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Although smelt runs get most of the attention, as spring progresses and stream temperatures increase and water levels drop, other spring spawning runs can bring outstanding fishing. Following the smelt (about two weeks later) are the suckers, followed one or two weeks after that by fallfish (some call them chubs) and black-nose dace. Sucker spawn is small and varies in color. Most that I have seen are pale to medium yellow in color. Eggs leak from female suckers before and during the actual spawning activity. Trout and salmon line up behind sucker schools, feasting on the yellow eggs. I have caught a salmon, opened its mouth to remove the fly, and its gullet appeared to be full of lemon jello because it had swallowed so many eggs. Fishing can be so good during the sucker spawning run in the Rapid River that several guides I know turn down guiding jobs (even knowing there would be large tips involved) to fish themselves for brook trout up to 5 pounds. Believe me; I have seen the pictures (carefully edited to remove any landmarks that might reveal the exact location). Fishing the sucker spawn is not easy – it took me ten years to learn the intricacies of it – those that have figured it out don’t share readily. I can’t really blame them.

Welcome to the Mainelyflyfishing blog.

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Welcome to the Mainelyflyfishing blog. I will update this blog frequently to keep you up to date on the latest fishing information and to pass on fishing tips and techniques. I will excerpt parts of my flyfishing book that is coming out this year (I hope) by the title of “The Five Seasons of Northern New England Flyfishing”.

This is the time of year when everybody starts to anticipate ice out but the date varies widely. For example, from 1880 to 2010, ice-out on Rangeley Lake has ranged from April 14 to May 24th – a range of 41 days! This late winter has brought us historic warm temperatures with Rangeley getting into the upper 70’s last week and even more importantly, having a large number of nights when the temperatures do not dip below freezing. The earliest ice-out record in Rangeley of April 14th is certainly going to be threatened unless the weather changes drastically – I am thinking sometime the first week of April. There is also very little snow left. This will undoubtedly move the entire hatch calendar up.

Here is my book excerpt for this week…

Ice Out is the real start of the fly fishing season in northern New England, even if some streams and rivers might be fishable when the season opens on the first day of April. Although some hardy souls fish the traditional opening, it is an exercise that reminds me of pre-season major league baseball. Good for getting the equipment ready, and loosening up the old muscles, but not really the main event.

 

I consider spring fishing to be the time from ice-out to when water temperatures rise into the 50’s and the trees leaf-out. This is generally the period between late April and late May, but it can range from early April to late June depending upon latitude, elevation, and weather conditions. Spring fly fishing in New England should not be confused with other traditional spring events in other parts of the country, such as the Kentucky Derby or the Masters Golf tournament, where there is plentiful sunshine and warm weather. You won’t find mint juleps, bluebirds singing or azaleas blooming. You are more likely to see sleet and snow, and the land is not really green yet. There are just hints here and there; small willow leaves, a few trillium, and perhaps, the first lily pad.
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The first key to successful early season fishing is being on the water shortly after ice-out but predicting when that will occur is not an easy task. How best to predict when the ice will go out on a particular body of water is a widely debated topic in New England. (Of course, almost anything in New England is debatable and can be debated – just sit in a few town meetings and you will know what I mean.) There is wide agreement, however, about two facts: (1) your ice out prediction for any lake or pond is going to be wrong more often than it is going to be right, and (2) when the ice does go out, the fishing can be superb.

 

It is getting increasingly difficult to predict the month that the ice will go out, let alone the week or the day. Maybe global climate change is creating some truly bizarre weather relative to historic averages. In Rangeley, Maine, ice out has recently occurred as early as mid April when historically the date has been well into May. There are now some years when Sebago Lake never freezes, yet at the turn of the century Mainers drove their model T’s from town to town over the ice in the Gulf of Maine! Erratic weather is yet another variable fisherman may have to deal with in the years to come.