MAINELY OUTDOORS
by Bill Graves
Spend enough hours engaging the furred and finned inhabitants of Maine’s woods and waters and you’ll witness some strange occurrences. A few experiences that you might even hesitate to tell others about, especially without a tea-totaling, truth-telling witness to verify your story. Over my last two summers fishing regional waterways, I’ve seen and heard some real fish tales.
While casting a small streamer fly near a creek inlet along a small cove in Number Nine Lake this spring, I saw and caught my first acrobatic brook trout. Now, as any experienced trout angler will verify, brookies splash and thrash once hooked, but rarely do they leap from the water as a salmon might. I’ve experienced the exception to the rule!
Thinking back, I realize the trout must have been laid up in the shallow water gazing skyward, poised to pounce just waiting for a tasty treat to arrive. I swear my fly had yet to touch the water surface when this foot-long speckled rocket exploded skyward several inches from the fly, switched ends in mid-air and ate the streamer on reentry. I’ve had trout sip a fly delicately, swirl and plunge, and smash a socket in the water, but never before or since have I watched a gymnastic leap and downward strike. I quickly released the trout hoping some other angler might eventually see the same trick.
Three weeks ago while casting a plastic worm for smallmouth bass along the shoreline of the Penobscot River with a couple of friends (and witnesses), another amazing strike occurred. Precision casts to submerged rocks, exposed stumps and logs and under overhanging brush and tree limbs are crucial to drawing strikes from smallies. Sooner or later, and at least a couple of times each outing, even the best target-oriented casters end up with a bait in the trees.
Sometimes a quick tug of the rod tip or a taut line finger pluck and release will easily dislodge the hooks, especially on a single hook worm rig. More often, maneuvering the boat to the shoreline among rocks and shallow water and among the tree limbs and fir boughs is required to free a multi-hook $8 or $10 plug. It’s frustrating, as everyone on board has to stop casting plus the boat scares away any fish along that stretch of shore, but that’s part of accuracy bass casting.
It was a single, fairly bare tree limb about three feet from the bank and four feet above the water that my wacky-rigged worm looped-over. I raised my rod but that only served to pull my line a bit and raise my bait about six inches out of the water. I extended the rod and my worm sank back below the surface, but the line remained snagged on the branch. I gave the rod one more twitch before moving the boat, and as the worm once again rose above the stream a bass came right out if the water and grabbed it.
Talk about flying fish! It was just over 2-1/2 lbs. and apparently very hungry or really agitated that a worm could levitate to escape. The vigorous strike pulled my line from the tree rather than breaking it and after an acrobatic battle I released the bass to fly and fight again.
I’ve got an even stranger fish tale. My friend Dave Ash of Ashland recently took a father and young son bass fishing and both neophytes but very excited for their premier outing. The lad hooked and landed a couple of fish on a top water plug that seemed to work while the others did not. An errant cast into shoreline trees led to a trip ashore to retrieve the lure, which at $8 to $10 apiece are not throwaways.
A half hour later and three smallmouths later, the youngster was in the trees once more, but this time the line snapped. Fortunately, the colorful plug stayed hung-up on a branch and was once again retrieved and reattached to the lad’s line. A few minutes later, the boy hooked yet another bass on his now favorite lure but midway through the tug-of-war, too much pressure during a run parted the monofilament. The fish was gone, the lure was gone, and the adolescent angler was heartbroken.
And then by miracle or magic, 20 feet away, the floating plug suddenly popped to the surface, the smallmouth having twisted and turned to finally dislodge the hooks. Retrieved and re-tied to the line, the casting started anew with the lure with nine lives. Alas, too much boyish enthusiasm and perhaps too light a line choice lead to a repeat of a frantic, fighting bass breaking the monofilament and leaving with the lure for good. Or so it seemed.
Truth is stranger than fiction! Just a few minutes later after attaching another lure for the youngster, Dave was casting a shallow diving plug when he enjoyed a hearty strike. Upon playing the bass to boatside, Dave noticed something odd and drew his boat buddies’ attention to his fish. There in its jaw was not only his plug, but the colorful lure and piece of line the young angler had lost! Most fishermen assume a fish won’t bite again for quite awhile after being hooked, but apparently that’s not true. You couldn’t make up events like this.
To support this last event, I was involved in a similar situation. I favor red-colored weedless hooks for fishing five-inch Senko plastic worms. I’ve not seen anyone else use these bright red bass hooks as they are fairly unique and hard to find. Earlier this summer while fishing a favorite productive small cove on the Penobscot, a good-sized bass broke my line by taking it under a submerged log where it had been lurking when I hooked it.
The next evening I received an interesting phone call from a friend who also bass fishes the same waters I frequent. He asked if I’d been on the Penobscot the day before, and had I fished a particular location. Once I’d confirmed his questions, he said he figured as much. Near a sunken log he hooked and landed a good sized smallmouth. Once boated, he began to retrieve his lure and there in the corner of the jaw was a red weedless hook with a foot of monofilament attached!
Among all the reasons to go fishing here in Maine, these few “truth is stranger than fiction” tales add one more to the list. If you spend some time outdoors in Aroostook, you never know what might happen!
