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Maine Brook Trout Video

The beginning to middle of May marks the time when ponds and lakes in northern Maine lose their ice for the year. For the past 30 years, my father and various collections of his friends have visited the pond in question, in search of large, native Maine Brook Trout. My virgin pilgrimage to the pond was last spring, and several weeks ago Wilkie and I made the voyage north again. Travel time to this pond is roughly 7 hours from Portland, so it's a good ways up there. It always amazes me to think that you can drive for 7+ hours and still be in Maine. Wilkie and I got an earlier start this year, and we arrived in camp around 1:30 am, 3 hours earlier than the previous year, and this allowed us to sleep for two full hours before taking Wilkie's new square stern's virginity in the cool water. Fishing in this pond is slow, to say the least. Over the course of three full days of fishing, I caught three brookies. Wilkie caught two, Mitton five and my father netted seven. All fish were caught on streamers, the majority on the Woodville Special, "Woody" for short. The hog I brought to the boat took a white bead-head woolly bugger. Fishing is done by either trolling streamers around the shoreline or by anchoring and casting around structure, which, thankfully, there is a good amount of. Rockpiles, drop-offs, points, islands and logs all provided areas that we concentrated our anchored fishing to, and about half of all the fish caught on the trip were done so while anchored. Wilkie and I spent the vast majority of our time anchored, throwing sinking lines, but I will say that

we both picked up one fish apiece while trolling on the last morning. In fact, 4 of the 5 fish we landed over the course of the long weekend were caught before 6 am, within the first hour of us being on the pond. This makes for a long day of fishing, especially when you're throwing bead-heads from dawn 'til dusk. Long days on the water such as these offer much time for contemplation and reflection, fly changes, technique tinkering and conversation. At at any moment, that bruiser could strike, but they obviously don't at every moment, so there's a constant shifting of attention and energy levels while in the boat. At some times it seems that the cast you just made will surely produce a fish, then at others it seems like you're just waiting for the sky to lighten or darken, and just casting in between to kill the time. My biggest fish came just before noon, and was the only fish of the day. I'm happy to say that I didn't miss any strikes this trip, for they do come far and few between. Wildlife sightings included moose, deer, a bobcat, rabbits, a fox, numerous birds and also the first black bear I had ever seen in my life. I finally got around to piecing together some video and pictures from the trip. This is my first attempt at some edited fishing video, so please give comments and suggestions. You may notice that there aren't any actual solid hookups on video; the very slow nature of the pond wasn't conducive to such video-ing, but there's some pretty sweet underwater footage and some great pics in there. The video does give a good short synopsis of the trip in general. The tune's by Robert Earl Keen.