Penobscot Valley Fishing Report: January 24, 2008

The warm temperatures of the past two weeks has been great for the winter fuel bills, however it has done little for ice conditions except deteriorate them.

We are hearing from and seeing very few anglers so far this year. This past weekend biologists surveyed Schoodic, Seboeis, Molunkus, Upper Cold Stream, Webster, Matagamon, and Scraggly Lakes. Each body of water was checked at least one day during the weekend. Only three parties were observed, and questionable ice conditions limited our ability to fully cover several of the lakes. Hopefully, the temperature will continue to cool down and more ice will form so all the winter anglers chomping at the bit to do some ice fishing will have safe conditions to do so.

The few fishing reports that we have received from around Region F have been good. The low angling pressure early in the season should produce some excellent ice fishing throughout the region later in the season. Here are a few highlights.

The splake are biting in Lower Togue, Cedar, and West Seboeis. We also stock splake in Endless but have had no reports from that lake. The fishing is slow so far for the fall yearling brook trout that were stocked in Upper Cold Stream Pond, Cold Stream Pond and Molunkus Lake, however anglers at Upper Pond and Silver Lake are doing well. Anglers are catching some nice salmon in Cold Stream Pond, Pleasant Pond, Upper Jo-Mary, West Seboeis and Scraggly. We have measured a few healthy lake trout from the north end of Schoodic Lake. Angling pressure has been way down on our togue lakes, but as the ice continues to form we expect that to change. Reports of nice catches of white perch have come from Dolby flowage, Molunkus, Escutasis, Brackett, Pemadumcook and Upper Jo Mary.

Again, we issue a word of caution when venturing out ice fishing. Hopefully the temperature will continue to drop over the next few weeks giving us plenty of ice for the winter anglers.