February 2008 Almanac
This Month: Go Aerobic Outdoors, Or Leisurely In
February means more of January, but yes, we have changes impossible for even the most casual observer to miss. Snow and ice in early January can be iffy some years, but this month, we indeed have thick ice and lots of snow every year. Days have lengthened noticeably, particularly by the end of the second month, and some days just have a half-spring feel. Of course, a winter storm can knock hints of the new season back into Tuesday.
February offers multiple activities that run a wide range on the exertion scale, beginning with bobcat hunting, a tough sport. Hunters must chase bobcats through deep snow to tree them. Chasing rabbits with a beagle in a small wood lot strikes hunters as an easier sport, but ice-fishing may be a tad easier, particularly for those folks with snowmobiles to aid them. Cross-country skiing and snowshoeing offer folks plenty or aerobic exercise, but snowmobiling means less of a cardiovascular workout.
On the opposite end of the exertion scale, many folks spend February tying flies, cooking leisurely meals, perusing seed catalogs, building rods, reading how-to and mood books, etc. The only hard feature of any of them is getting a sore butt.
Sportsman shows kick off this month big time just south of Kittery, and a good one offers folks with cabin fever an excellent diversion. Soon, it will be March and a new songbird fresh from the south or north sings most mornings, so while lying in bed at dawn, astute listeners hear new sounds.
Yes, it’s February with all its joys in the outdoors and indoors, but by March, snow gets old. We can rejoice, though, because open-water fishing is just around the corner.
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Where the Action Is
Hoppers and Whoppers
Want to find plenty of varying hares? Check out DeLorme’s The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer (MAG), Map 50, D-2 and look at the Greenville Road. Those spurs off this very rural highway probably aren’t plowed now, so folks can snowmobile or snowshoe down them along with their beagles and find ideal habitat for long-eared critters.
Do you want to catch a huge freshwater fish by Maine standards? Head to the Belgrade Lakes and fish Great or Long ponds and give northern pike a shot. Bait dealers in the area can give advice on baits and even where-to-go. The sport generally proves slow, but anyone can catch a 20-pound-plus fish on the next flag.
To orient yourself, check Map 12, A-5 and Map 20, E-4 and see where the boat launches and parking areas lie.
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Tips of the Month
Cooking Fish to Perfection
Here’s a great fish-cooking tip from the James Beard cookbook: For perfectly cooked fish, bake the filet or whole fish 10 minutes per inch of thickness in a preheated 450-degree oven.
Here are three addenda to this rule: 1) Before cooking, leave a fish or filet on a counter until it reaches room temperature, 2) precisely measure the fish’s thickness from side to side — not backbone to belly — with a ruler and 3) bake the fish in a metal baking dish.
The cooking time is very precise: Say the fish is two inches thick; cook 20 minutes. If it is 2 1/4 inches, leave it in 22 minutes and 30 seconds. If it is 3 3/8 inches, cook it 33 minutes, 45 seconds. You get the picture. The results will be perfectly baked fish that is just turning from transluscent, to a moist opaque, when the timer goes off.
…Two more quick points, too. Many people think 450 degrees is too hot, but trust Beard. He’s da’ man. Also, do not use a ceramic baking dish. It takes too long for the oven to heat it up, thus prolonging the cooking time a little.
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Nature Watch
Hark! Coyotes on the Prowl
When the first week of February opens, listen for the howling of coyotes at night, particularly just after darkness starts falling. Also listen for the yipping of foxes.
Days are growing longer, and with the increase, squirrels become more active as they raid their caches of nuts and fruits.
During thaws, skunks may wander at night, and they have breeding on their minds. Raccoons also think about procreation, but they are less intrusive to the noise in the middle of the night, so we notice them far less.
In the granular snow next to the ground, meadow voles follow runways through the icy crystals. These tunnels will make marks on the ground that astute observers notice next spring.
As the month closes, the longer days, nearly 12 hours long, start chickadees singing more and sap starts to run.
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News and Tidbits
Stripers Get a Bush Boost
Stripers Forever, an internet-based organization advocating game-fish status for striped bass, is extremely pleased with President George W. Bush’s executive order, signed on October 20, 2007, designating striped bass and redfish as game fish in federal waters.
“President Bush, an avid angler himself, has listened to concerned recreational saltwater fishermen on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and set a strong precedent by conserving these highly important species in federal waters and encouraging those coastal states that have not already done so to apply the same management tool in their inshore waters,” says Brad Burns, president of Stripers Forever.
In his executive order issued at a ceremony on October 20, 2007 at Saint Michaels, Maryland, President Bush made it clear that he is not opposed to commercial fishing. But he does recognize that game-fish designation is the best management tool for conserving species vital to the recreational fishing public.
“Striped bass and redfish are fished recreationally for both sport and food by millions of Americans,” said Brad Burns. “In-depth socio-economic studies show that the recreational industry these fisheries represent is many times more valuable than harvesting those fish commercially.”
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Strange But True
Maine’s Many Mis-Named Critters
In Maine, we call two char species “lake trout” and “brook trout,” two sunfish species “largemouth bass” and “smallmouth bass,” one bass species “white perch,” varying hare “rabbit,” ruffed grouse “partridge” and Hexagenia mayfly “green drake.” The last one pops eyes because green-drake (Ephemera guttulata) in this state are nearly as rare as the Holy Grail, an exaggeration, but not much of one. Fortunately, we don’t call moose “elk” or whitetailed deer “pronghorns.”
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Bird of the Month
Bald Eagle
Hollywood created the oddest image of America’s bald eagles in the 1940s and 1950s when directors decided the rather weak, high-pitched yelping call of this majestic bird lacked drama, so they dubbed in the more thrilling cheerrrr of a red-tailed hawk. So, moviegoers who had never seen or heard this bird in the wild have no idea what they sound like.
My first encounter ever with a bald eagle in the wild occurred on the West Branch of the Penobscot about two miles below Ripogenus Dam. It began with a merganser swimming upstream, and then all of a sudden, this diving duck panicked and started running against the current, angling its path toward overhanging alders.
Then, the cause of the erratic behavior caught my eye, an adult bald eagle, perched on the limb of a pine hanging over the water. This was circa 1973 and a big, big deal in those days. Apparently, the merganser has seen these big birds enough to know not to fly and seek shelter beneath alders.
We know this eagle grows large, but book descriptions do not prepare us for the actual size. My first eagle had perched itself on the opposite bank of this big river, but its dimensions still impressed me — one helluva’ lot of bird. They measure 31 inches in length, weigh 10 pounds and sport an 80-inch wingspan.
How do you tell a golden eagle from an immature bald eagle? The answer is easy. Almost inevitably in this state, a dark-brown eagle with no white head will be an immature bald because golden eagles prove darned scarce to find in the wild.
However, observers can be more specific. An immature bald eagle has solid dark-brown tail feathers on top of the tail. Mature golden eagles have a lighter, “golden” head and mute stripes going across the top of the tail feathers. Immature goldens have white on the tail feathers ahead of the dark tips. (Ken Allen)
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Do You Know?
Altogether, They Are Varmints
Do you know which four animals in Maine have no closed season?
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Book Corner
About Trout
About Trout with the subtitle The Best of Robert J. Behnke from Trout Magazine crossed this reviewer’s desk not long ago, a $29.95 book that has excellent, excellent color paintings by Joseph R. Tomelleri. Because of the art work and binding, the book looks much more expensive than its $30 price.
It surprises me little that About Trout comes from The Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, long a leader in publishing topnotch outdoors books. What a mark this company has made on America’s life-recreation sports such as angling, hunting and so forth, particularly in the fly-fishing world.
Behnke has made quite a name for himself in angler circles, largely because of his column in Trout, the magazine for Trout Unlimited members that just happens to be on newsstands, too. The column has made him somewhat of a household word. It’s no exaggeration to say About Trout has plenty of information that a serious angler would want to know about North American salmonids and a little about trout beyond this geographic area.
The chapters in the book are in chronological order as each one appeared through the four seasons over the years, which has an added bonus for readers. Folks can see how fishing attitudes have changed through the eyes of Behnke, no small consideration. Behnke’s first chapter in the book came out in spring 1983, and it has been quite a trip in the last quarter century.
A perfect example would be the essay entitled “We’re Putting Them Back Alive” in the fall 1989 issue of Trout compared to “Limit Your Kill” in the summer 1999 issue a decade later. Trout Unlimited has hammered at catch-and-release through my entire lifetime, and Behnke helped spur the movement.
Some of Maine’s Trout Unlimited leaders have told me TU’s main mission is to improve habitat rather than deal with regulations. On page 149 in the book, a quote from the fall 1991 issue puts this thought into perspective. Behnke wrote, “Since then considerable progress has been made toward increasing emphasis on wild trout management by special regulations and better understanding of habitat.” (Ken Allen)
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Innocent Bystander
Quality Regs Lead to Quality Fishing
Strict regulations tailored to a particular water can make a huge difference in improving a fishery. This direct, inexpensive method insures quality, and it’s a shame more Maine sports organizations don’t get onboard with this simple concept.
Two centuries of fisheries management across the world have taught us stricter regs work, and as recently as 15 years ago, ex-Commissioner Ray Owen at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIF&W) proved it in Maine with his fishing initiative that included stricter regulations on blue-ribbon waters. After Owen pushed for saner management, these waters excelled.
Well-meaning individuals in at least two Maine fishing organizations claim that habitat restoration gives us the best bang for our buck, and their idea smacks of logic, albeit specious logic. The problem is obvious to anyone who looks into this remedy for a fisheries. Restoration costs huge bucks, and most organizations, as well as a tiny state agency such as DIF&W, lack the funds to make a meaningful difference.
One quick example illustrates it. A few years ago, a habitat restoration project on a Wisconsin river required a $350,000 study before the construction workers arrived! In a state like Maine with a tiny fish-and-wildlife department and sparse membership in organizations, money creates a huge deterrent to construction costs for such projects.
If you want to put $350,000 into perspective, one of Maine’s larger fishing organizations takes in roughly $52,000 per year in dues from all its members in the state. …Just $52,000! This doesn’t count corporate donations, but still…
Three years ago, Robert Van Riper, a DIF&W regional fisheries biologist in Region B, told me that he thinks stream restoration need not cost a fortune. He felt volunteer help under the direction of a biologist would accomplish wonders. His proposal excited me, and I thought, “This man is heading for a major leadership position at the Department.”
However, leaders of at least two sports organizations in Maine told me that they lacked volunteer labor for such a project, and considering Van Riper has done limited stream restoration since he told me, those two spokesmen are apparently right.
Some folks think Maine should abolish stocking and use the money saved to restore habitat, which is another specious argument. Most of Maine salmonid stocking goes into waters with limited or no spawning habitat, and much of that occurs in the southern third of Maine where most of the license buyers live. In short, it is not a question of restoration, but rather, no historical habitat for procreation. Without the stocking…no fishery…much fewer license buyers.
When it is all said and done, though, it would be nice to see Van Riper indeed get volunteer groups to restore habitat. It couldn’t hurt, but the best route for quality fishing will always be regulations — regulations that control kill rates of fish and stop destruction of habitat. (Ken Allen)
Next Month: Mud Season South, Snow Up North
March highlights the two Maines more than any other month. In the southern third of the state, we can see spring coming most days because the weather has a half-spring feel, brave souls are whitewater canoeing and early open-water anglers hit the few places that are legal to fish year-round. In the north country, snowmobiling is still booming because snow is waist-deep, and ice-fishing also attracts crowds. It’s still winter as usual.
In Southern, Central and Coastal Maine, snow is receding to the back side of ridges, waterfowl is returning, woodcock peen at dusk and new songbird species appear daily. At dawn, we lie in bed and hear a new song that we haven’t listened to since the previous spring. Life has an excitement that makes the older generation feel young again.
Up north, snowmobilers have 12-hour days now, and sunburning becomes a problem for sledders and ice fishers. On weekends, motels and lodges fill with people, so folks in the know wouldn’t head to a northern hamlet without a reservation. The busiest time of year centers on sledding, and March is a top month for this hobby.
Even though winter activities are sailing along in Northern Maine, folks closer to Kittery start walking more, sighting waterfowl and songbirds and more or less doing spring things.
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Answer to “Do You Know?”
What an Interesting Stew They Would Make!
Daytime hunting of coyote, woodchuck, red squirrel and porcupine has no closed hunting season in Maine, but the nighttime hunting season on coyote runs from Jan. 1 to June 1.
Other than critters that have no closed season, varying hares endure the longest hunting season, a 6-month affair that kicks off Oct. 1 and ends Mar. 31.