It is that time of year!  Trout and salmon are active and now rising to early hatches of mayflies and caddis. Bass and Pike are in the shallows defending nests or prowling for food. Stripers have arrived. So many fishing options and only so many hours in the day – although fishable hours  now range from 430 AM to 830 PM.

One concern is the continued drought conditions from the last few years. I thought late summer of 2019 was bad, but then summer and early fall 2020 was worse, and so far 2021 is very dry and droughty even in early May. What little snowpack we had melted early or sublimated directly into the atmosphere and very little rain has fallen in the last few weeks.

Rivers are at summer levels or worse and many lakes are so low folks are having trouble getting their docks in.  The Rangeley River this week was running at 20 cfm instead of the normal 300 cfm. The lower Mags was at 120 when sometimes this time of year is at 700. The ground, even in the deep woods is dry and grass and other vegetation in sunny spots are already getting crispy. If we don’t get significant rain and soon, I shudder to think how bad it could get.

With early ice out and warm weather, the entire season is several weeks ahead at least. Stripers have arrived a week or two early. Bass are spawning a week or two early as well. Trout and salmon were rising to early mayflies in the Kennebago watershed last week and that is also two weeks early.  In the upper Mags they have been fishing the sucker spawn for over a week. You will want to cash in all your chips and go fishing now, before waters warm further or rivers fall even lower.

The ice went out very early this year in Rangeley, one of the earliest ice outs ever – around April 17th. I couldn’t make it up there, so I don’t have much of a report. I heard that people were catching fish in Rangeley Lake almost immediately.  I missed the smelt runs and the sucker spawn due to family obligations that take precedence, but made it up last weekend to catch the early hatches.

I opened up the camp on Kennebago Lake and fished the watershed. Rangeley River was too low to fish effectively. On the upper parts of the Kennebago River, good trout (16 inches and above) were rising to dry flies while others of similar size were down in deep holes eating baitfish (based on the evidence they coughed up when hooked on Cosohammer streamers and other similar patterns.)
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Sporadic hatches and spinners of early mayflies were bringing the brook trout to the surface.

On the lake, in the so-called Logans (shallow area where the Upper Kennebago River flows in), a profusion of midges brought smutting trout to the surface.

       A calm evening made it easy to spot trout sipping midges.

                I did get distracted from looking for rises one evening