Posted June 30th, 2010 by Maine Sportsman
July’s Dry Heat Makes It Bearable…Even Sweet
July reigns as Maine’s hottest month, but dry air makes it bearable. Sure, humidity might take over for a few days, but mostly, this month offers dry heat, a sneaky heat that can burn unprotected skin – so please be careful.
The month offers outdoors folks so many options that we can run ourselves ragged:
…Beginning with saltwater fishing. Stripers, mackerel and blues arrive now, and after two rather dead years with stripers, we’re hoping big things will happen with ol’ line-sides this summer. Mackerel migrations have been predictable, but blues as usual have been unpredictable but possible on any outing.
Northern Maine brook-trout ponds have hatches each evening, and action depends on wind dying. When it doesn’t, astute fly rodders anchor and bottom dredge spring holes and deep holes.
Early in July, northern brooks and streams have topnotch brookie action, particularly for fly rodders, and in the South Country, brookies head to deep holes and concentrate in pods where bait dunkers can target them.
Unseasonable warm rains make northern rivers pick up as salmon and brookies migrate into flowing water. Often anglers can have a river to themselves now.
Black-bass fishing for people who know how to work a jig deeply can offer slab-sided bass now, perfect fish for making rolled-fillet recipes. Folks interested in the future of black bass will buy haddock fillets and release all their bass.
At times, warm-water species such as white perch, black crappie, pickerel, yellow perch, hornpout and eels offer nonstop action in July – great, under-fished sources for a fish fry.
Clay-sport shooting picks up in July as does bow-and-arrow practice and rifle shooting. Serious hunters seldom stray far from thinking about hunting, so summer heat means nothing more than a good time to shoot.
Gardens start producing leaf veggies, radishes and summer squash, so fresh garden salads become common on Maine tables. Italian-type recipes make summer squash so appealing – a rather bland dish without seasoning.
Blueberries start before the month ends, and muffins, cakes, pies, berry and dumplings and more dominate meals three times a day, if folks have a good picking area.
Hiking also picks up in popularity now as parents take kids on hikes that they’ll be remembering in 2080. Guidebooks that help folks know for certain what they see adds to these outings.
It’s all there now, folks. You just have to go and do it.
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Tips of the Month
Biscuit Wood for the Picking
By July, campers at popular campgrounds can no longer find wood lying on the ground.
Often, though, spring flooding leaves alder sticks in alder thickets along shorelines, remains of what beaver have stored or left that high water picked up and transported downstream.
Most folks would never think of burning alder so ignore it, but old-timers called dry alder “biscuit wood” because it burned with a fierce heat, perfect for baking biscuits. It also boils water in a jiffy and makes great broiling coals. Campers wise in the ways of the wood use this easily obtainable fuel source.
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Covering Rises Key to Success … Up to a Point
On most brook-trout ponds in Northern Maine, the wind dies most evenings and fish rise for predictable hatches, particularly in late June through much of July, before warming water may end the emergences until cooler water prevails again.
Maine fly rodders practically invented “covering the rise,” and here’s how it works. A fly rodder keeps loose coils of line on the bottom of a canoe or boat and has a dry fly and 30 feet of line on the water.
When a trout rises, it’s crucial to drop a dry fly onto the rise ring as soon as possible. If this can be done within three or four seconds, it usually means a rise and hookup.
Sometimes, though, a brookie rising quickly in one spot after another, headed in a particular direction. An astute fly rodder will land the fly ahead of the trout’s swimming direction and let the fish swim up to it.
Nymphs or streamers should land off to the side of the rise ring and be worked back by the fish.
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Wildflower Photography
For wildflower photographers, wind creates an incredible nuisance because it causes blossoms to sway, softening lines in the finished photograph. Also, glaring sun can blow out one portion of the photo while making shadows in a blossom look coal black.
Two tips combat the problem:
• Use a gauze-like dome over the plant and photographer to diffuse light and lessen wind. Such domes are commonly sold on the Net.
• Photograph in the morning and evening when the air is calmer.
The results will be perfectly sharp images with good exposure – images that sell.
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Where the Action Is
So Many Coastal Rivers That Salty Anglers Get Lost
Maps 6 and 7 of DeLorme’s The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer (MAG) show a vast network of major coastal rivers that connect to one another via smaller rivers and backwaters.
There is so much blue on the map, such complexity, that anglers new to the area can actually get lost within sight of dwellings. Indeed, this writer once stopped at a store within sight of a river to ask directions on how to get back to the Sheepscot River and eventually to the Kennebec River.
Check out the Kennebec River (Map 6, A-5, B-5, C-5, D-5 and E-6), Sasanoa River (Map 6, C-5), Back River (Map 6, C-5 and Map 7, C-1), Sheepscot River (Map 7, B-2, C-1 and D-1), Cross River, (Map 7, C-2) and Damariscotta River (Map 7, A-3, B-3, C-3 and D-3). The Damariscotta requires a short trip across Lineken Bay, a sheltered part of the Atlantic Ocean, but all the others can be reached with inland tidal river travel.
These waters flow past some of Maine’s most picturesque settings, a calendar photo at every turn, a calendar photo where anglers can catch striped bass, bluefish and mackerel. During late June and early July, cow and bull stripers invade these waters and offer trophy fishing for folks who can work a lure or fly deeply. These rivers attract fly rodders, bait dunkers and hardware flingers for traditional saltwater action.
Matching baits, lures or flies in size, color and silhouette to baitfish will keep a bend in the rod – just like matching the hatch on a trout stream.
This advice has but one caveat: Veterans on the Kennebec say any fly or lure works gangbusters as long as it’s white. They say that because it’s true. Most baitfish have white on them.
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News & Tidbits
Daily Salmonid Bag Limit Increased Significantly
Two years ago in 2008, in a rather secretive move by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, bureaucrats increased the daily general bag limit from five trout and salmon to 10 to 13 fish, depending on county and water type, and slated the change to begin April 1, 2010. The
Department did this by dropping the “aggregate” wording in the law, which in the past kept the daily bag limit at five fish.
On page 5 of the new booklet, though, the aggregate wording disappeared for general waters, so it now said that anglers can catch two landlocked salmon, two lake trout, two brown trout, two rainbow trout and two to five brook trout daily, adding up to 10 to 13 salmonids. (In the eyes of the law, splake and arctic char falls into the brookie category here.)
In Androscoggin, Cumberland, Franklin, Hancock, Kennebec, Knox, Lincoln, Oxford, Penobscot, Sagadahoc, Waldo, Washington and York counties, the daily bag limit in general-law ponds and lakes is two brook trout and in brooks, streams and rivers five. In the rest of the counties in the northern portion of the state, the daily limit is five brookies in all general waters, explaining why it can be 10 or 13 salmonids.
The state still has S-regulations on certain waters, which may be stricter or more lenient than general law, depending on management goals.
People, including DIF&W spokesmen, claim that anglers must travel to multiple waters to catch more than one species – not really true. So many Maine waters have salmon, brookies and togue or brookies and togue or salmon, browns and rainbows or browns and rainbows and so forth.
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Snapping Turtles Plan Pregnancies
As with most turtles, female snapping turtles can plan their pregnancies. The male’s sperm cells survive in the female’s reproductive tract for up to three years in a specialized duct. Then, when food is plentiful and life is good, she can fertilize any eggs she happens to be carrying.
When eggs ripen in late spring or early summer, she develops a wanderlust and leaves the water – one of the few times these turtles willingly leave their aquatic safe haven to search for a suitable location to lay eggs.
Snapping turtles sometimes lay their eggs considerable distances from the water, and researchers have recorded treks of up to a quarter-mile. After choosing a site, she digs a bottle-shaped hole with her hind feet, getting as deep as she can reach – up to eight inches. She then lays from 10 to 30 eggs the size of ping-pong balls and covers them with the previously excavated soil, grading it smooth with her lower shell and tail.
Depending on the temperature, rainfall and moisture content of the nest, the eggs hatch from 55 to 125 days after laying. In northern climates, some egg nests last over the winter with hatching occurring in the spring of the following year. Around Maine, most nests have hatched by the end of September.
Assuming that a passing skunk or raccoon doesn’t discover the nest, the hatchling baby snappers burrow up through the covering soil and then seek the nearest body of water. In practical terms, this means moving downhill until encountering water.
During this overland migration, the young turtles are most vulnerable. Even though most of the little turtles move at night, wandering raccoons, skunks and even owls pick off as many hatchlings as they can detect for a tasty meal.
Those turtles that actually make it to water are still not safe. Snakes, turtles, herons and other snapping turtles all find the youngsters a tasty treat and make the most of any encounter.
Perhaps one turtle hatchling in 20 will live to see its second year.
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2010 Big Shrimp Year
Commercial fishermen in New England caught nearly 11 million pounds of shrimp last spring, the biggest seasonal harvest since 1997. This big catch led regulators to close the season early.
The improving economy also helped the market improve the volume of sales at higher prices, a good-news story in Maine’s commercial-fishing world.
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Orca Pods Superior Hunters
One hunting tactic of orca pods begins with a line of them rushing at an ice floe that holds penguins that feel safe on the high and dry sanctuary. The orcas swim close together at 30 knots and push a big wave ahead of them, and just before reaching the edge of the ice, they execute a perfect U-turn, which washes the water over the floe and dumps some of the penquins into the sea, making them available for a feed.
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Obama Shocked Environmentalists
This past spring, the Obama administration spearheaded a move that shocked environmentalists. For the first time in a generation, the International Whaling Commission announced a 10-year deal to suspend the moratorium on whaling countries, so now, whalers can kill whales for commercial purposes.
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Invasive Species Problem?
Lionfish, a candy-striped aquarium species, is taking over the Caribbean, and the solution surely looks hopeful. Lionfish is what’s for dinner! Commercial fishermen plan to catch them as fast as possible and turn them into batter-fried, roasted and grilled delectables. Commercial fishermen have long since proven that they can over-harvest a resource, so the lionfish plan looks like a good one.
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Bikers Should Wear Helmets
More and more Maine hunters and anglers use bicycles for exercise and for hunting and fishing, particularly to access backcountry areas behind gates.
The following statistics establish the need for safety:
Recently published datum in the spring issue of Bicycling magazine out of St. Emmaus, Pennsylvania highlights the importance of wearing a helmet. Nine out of 10 bicyclists killed worldwide in 2008 weren’t wearing a helmet.
This same publication mentioned a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study that showed one-quarter (24 percent) of bicycle fatalities occurred to folks who had at least 0.08 percent alcohol content in their blood – legally drunk by Maine standards.
That magazine also mentioned a research project in the United Kingdom that shows speed kills, even in lower speeds. If a vehicle is traveling 30 miles per hour instead of 20 mph and hits a pedestrian, the walker is eight times more likely to be killed. This figure translates to bicycle collisions, too, maybe not exactly but close.
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Forests Declining
After more than 150 years of natural re-growth, New England’s forests are declining, even in Maine, although northern Maine and Vermont are experiencing much less of a decline than southern New England. Less than 20 percent of New England’s 33 million acres of trees, waters and wetlands have permanent protection against development.
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Global Warming Problem?
Global warming strikes most of us as the biggest problem facing the world, but last April, clients who went on the first 2010 rafting trip with North Country Rivers in Bingham might think that claim is a trifle exaggerated because it snowed that day.
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Bird of the Month
Razorbill ‘Auks’ Fascinating
In Maine, razorbills (Alca torda) mostly nest in rock crevices on coastal islands, often well protected by regulations that limit unsupervised access, so many folks have never seen one. It takes a concerted effort by birdwatchers to get on islands with these birds.
In my youth, birdwatchers called this species “razorbill auk,” a designation that struck me as quaint to the core. It made me think of a magnificent extinct species called the great auk (Pinguinus impennis), which resembled a penguin. What a tourist attraction great auks would make in the 21st century.
Razorbills measure 17 inches, weigh 1.6 pounds and sport a 26-inch wingspan, a crow-sized bird that looks larger when perched on the ground because it tends to stretch its neck out and stand somewhat erect.
Like common puffins, this species drives photographers crazy because of the coal black on the top of the body and head and bright white color on the bottom of the body and lateral white lines on the bill. If a photographer properly exposes the black for details, the white gets blown out. If the white is right, the black turns into a blob without showing feather texture.
Ten years ago, the late Bill Silliker, Jr. and I were on Machias Seal Island off Jonesport, shooting images of common puffins. We also worked with a pair of nesting razorbills, which showed me – once again – that photos and art works do no justice to most bird species. They are strikingly beautiful.
Razorbills make no noise at sea, according to Sibley, but have a melancholy, mechanical, grunting sound on the nest. Peterson calls this latter sound a deep growling Hey, Al.
If the number of eggs produced with each nesting indicates the success of a species when raising young, razorbills rank as one of the best parents. Like similar genera, a razorbill lays one egg, bluish with brown spots.
Razorbills breed from the Arctic to Maine, and they feed on small fish, shrimp and squid. (Ken Allen)
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Do You Know?
A Tree with Muscles!
Do you know which tree indigenous to the Mid-Coast and Southern Maine looks as if the trunk has sinew like a weightlifter’s forearms?
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Book Corner
Heinrich’s Summer World A Must Buy
In last April’s issue of The Maine Sportsman, “Book Corner” I covered Bernd Heinrich’s Winter World (Harper Perennial), which generated lots of enthusiasm from readers. This review generally receives lots of comments, but the Heinrich coverage really attracted attention.
Naturally, the sister book Summer World (HarperCollins Publishers) became a must-do title for this column, and like Winter World, readers will hope Summer World doesn’t end, one of those titles sensitive folks will read a chapter at a time to make it last. Compulsive types will plow through it.
The “Contents” table prepares the reader for the topics and includes titles such as “Awakening,” meaning the transition between winter and spring, also covered in “Introduction.” It then prepares us for wood frogs, early migrating birds, bald-faced hornets, mud daubers, cecropia moths, flies, hummingbirds, woodpeckers, ants, blackbirds and more.
…Including biographical material on Heinrich. This naturalist works as a biology professor at the University of Vermont and has a summer cabin in Perkins Township just west of Farmington. His other tie to Maine includes receiving part of his education at the Goodwill-Hinckley School between Fairfield and Skowhegan and the University of Maine, Orono. He is also a consummate jogger who wrote a book on the topic –Why We Run.
Readers tell me that they often skip introductions to books, a mistake with this one because the “Introduction” is chockablock full of captivating information about the change from winter to spring, making us see what’s under our noses. “Awakening” continues the education.
“Introduction” contains a quote so typical of Heinrich. The sentence captures one of the truths of the universe and makes a complex subject seem simple.
“The key to survival in winter is finding solutions to a combination of cold and scarce energy.”
“Mud Daubers and Behavior” starts with one of Heinrich’s astute observations on critter behavior – a wasp attempting to fly off with a spider. This man impresses readers with his perspicuity, and this chapter strikes this reviewer as quintessential Heinrich.
Buy Summer World (a $14.99 paperback) – and if you haven’t already – purchase the sister title Winter World (also a $14.99 paperback). (Ken Allen)
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Next Month
It’s Hotter Than You Know What, But Fall Lies Just Around the Corner
August’s average temperatures rise almost as high as July’s average, making the eighth month the second hottest in Maine. Because of humidity, many Mainers consider it the hottest month but statistically, July wins the honor.
Besides, at dawn, August often has a crispness that promises fall will arrive quite soon, and in bottomlands, red maple begin turning scarlet, making ignorant types say, “Fall’s coming early this year.”
No, it isn’t. An occasional red maple in lowlands just turns red in August, so it means nothing more than business as usual.
Red foliage and crisp mornings get folks thinking about hunting, though, and without a doubt, August sees a rise in practice shooting – bow and arrows, clay targets and rifle-range shooting. Practice really picks up in the eighth month because bear season begins Aug. 30 and bow-and-arrow hunting for deer in the expanded archery season kicks off in early September.
August once meant a lazy-man’s month, but berry picking, saltwater fishing, brookie angling and shooting practice make it a busy time. Raspberries and blueberries ripen now, mackerel and stripers swarm along the coast (hopefully after two bad years) and brook trout rise on Northern Maine ponds every evening. Folks take advantage of all these offerings, and once, retired fisheries biologist Forrest Bonney told this writer that Maine’s Northern Maine ponds were under-fished in summer.
Gardens start producing now – summer squash, leaf vegetables, stringed beans, radishes and more.
Early morning bicycling interests folks who like to get out in cool mornings for exercise before traffic picks up. Biking really peaks in August because September can be so cool at dawn or even mid-day as the month rushes toward October – a time when casual bicyclists can see the end is near for the year.
Life is good in a Maine August. The month’s just not long enough to allow us to do it all.”
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Answers to “Do You Know?”
It’s the American Hornbean
American hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana) typically grows to 20 to 30 feet tall, but it can reach heights of upwards to 70 feet. The crown spreads wider than it is tall, giving it an exotic look – say a tree from Africa or even the Jurassic era.
Indeed, groves of American hornbeam grow in the Sheepscot River bottomland two miles upstream of downtown Somerville. In early May before ferns spring up, the hornbeam canopy above smooth carpets of false hellebore make this landscape look different than any other spot in the state. A creative mind could conjure up images of dinosaurs. It’s that jungle-like.
Hornbeam trunks look as if they have muscles bulging below the smooth, grayish-blue bark, and casual observers may think it is a large alder, particularly since speckled alder – which can also have a single trunk – grows amongst the hornbeam.
American hornbeam also goes by the name ironwood because it is so dense and heavy that boards and posts from it resemble iron. It’s that hard. In days gone by people used it for stanchions, yokes, plane shoes or anyplace builders needed a very strong wood.
Posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 by Maine Sportsman
Categories: Almanac • General
Tags: July 2010 Issue
We think the cover photo of the August issue of The Maine Sportsman says it all … Summer fun in the sunshine!