April 2008 Almanac
This Month: April Shouts Spring
In the bottom third of Maine, April shouts spring more loudly with each passing day.
Often, by April 20, folks can plant peas, and an early sowing insures this legume will be ready for the traditional July 4th feast of fresh salmon, garden peas and boiled potatoes. When two main ingredients come from your own garden and the third from a nearby lake, the results can satisfy the soul.
Ice-out in the south country often occurs before mid-month, and then, look out! Fishing can be fast and furious as soon as lakes and ponds turn over, and then by late April, when black flies swarm and alder leaves reach the size of a mouse’s ear, brooks provide dynamite brookie angling.
In the bottom third of Maine, April arrives with snow and ice, but by the 30th, spring’s viridescent explosion has begun in good shape. However, photographers know a dirty little secret about April green. It may look lush to the eyes, but photos coming back from the developer in mid to late May show a tinge of green but mostly browns, grays, blacks and whites — disappointing to the photographer.
Landscape photographers in lower Maine find lots of texture creates ideal conditions for mood photos, so serious photographers get…well…serious now. Old sheds, fields with last year’s weeds, ledges, pine needles — they all beckon folks with an eye for composition.
Wildlife photographers tackle migratory waterfowl and songbirds as well as eagles now. But this time of year offers all kinds of critters. The sky’s the limit.
Meanwhile, in the North Country, snowmobiling booms for at least one to two more weeks. Snow stands four feet deep on gardens and darned few places are fishable for an open-water rod and reel.
The best part of April is this: It’s fun to get out after a winter of deep snow and intense cold, but fishing in the first two weeks doesn’t get serious enough to make us feel compelled to live and breathe the sport. We can poke around and not rush things in at least the first half of the month. That makes April a favorite time for outdoors folks.
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Tips of the Month
Steelheaders Are Bait Fishing Masters
New York bait anglers who hit steelhead rivers running into Lake Ontario have bait fishing down to a science, beginning with a snap and swivel on the end of a monofilament line. Folks tie the mono line onto the eye of the snap and swivel on the opposite end from the snap. Then to the other eye, they affix a leader, often 3- to 4-feet long, beside the snap. The weight, often a nylon sleeve filled with split shot, goes onto the snap via a hole in the sleeve. Then, a hook and bait goes onto the end of the leader. This setup works great because the weight bounces along the bottom while the bait rides a few inches above in the water column, resulting in anglers not snagging the bottom often. Eggs in a gauze-like bag works and even baitfish serve as the lure to fish.
Troll a Fly For Ice-Out Action
Many Maine fly rodders have perfected trolling with a fly to take advantage of that exciting period known as ice-out mania. Lead-core line or fast-sinking fly line with a 30-foot, 6- to 8-pound fluorocarbon leader work great for fooling salmonids because the line sinks enough to get down below the immediate surface and the long, nearly invisible fluorocarbon leader gets the fly away from the line.
(Savvy veterans tie a short, 10-pound leader to the end of the fly line or lead-core line with a nail knot or affix the 10-pound leader with a braided loop on the line and surgeon’s loop on the mono piece. With this setup, the leader breaks rather than the short butt. Why does an angler want this setup? …Because it is more time consuming to fasten a leader to the line than to a leader.)
When trolling a fly, it’s a good idea to put a SSG split shot on the leader about 10 feet ahead of the fly to get the baitfish offering down even more. Troll about four miles per hour — a good, fast walking speed — a perfect pace for salmon or browns. The split shot occasionally picks up a piece of grass, too, so it doesn’t ride down onto the fly.
A lure should be trolled just fast enough for optimum action, and sewn bait just slow enough to turn the bait over in a rhythmic manner — about 6/10ths of an hour.
Where the Action Is
The Old Reliables Still Best for Opening Day
Where does an open-water angler head on April Fool’s Day to cast?
Grand Lake Stream (DeLorme’s The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer (MAG), Map 35, B-4) ranks as the most popular early-season fishing hotspot because the chances of tangling with a landlocked salmon here is more than just good. Newcomers can follow the crowds to find the honey holes. It’s fly fishing only and smelt imitations as well as big dark nymphs work.
The Belgrade Lakes has three places that attract legions — 1) The Spillway Pool and the open water in Long Pond where the current pushes ice from shore (Map 20, E-4), 2) Castle Island bridge and two culverts (Map 20, E-4) and 3) Wings Mills Dam (Map 12, A-4). Crowds gather at these three spots, and folks can watch others and figure out the honey holes and approaches. Folks in these Belgrade Lakes early spots are friendly and willing to share information if novices approach them right.
The short stretch of the Kennebec River between the Route 16 Bridge in Bingham and Wyman Dam draw trollers each April, and despite the near certainty of deep snow on the banks, die-hard anglers take the occasional salmonid every April 1. Again, mobs gather, and newcomers can watch and see what the crowds are doing.
Brooks often flow low enough on opening day to produce action, and one great area to find dense brookie populations is Waldo County. (Check Map 14.) The land has nutrients galore, producing a dense deer herd, abundant grouse populations and lots of brook trout. Look on Map 14 and find brooks.
Most of the brooks and small streams have trout, but as Bill Woodward, a fisheries biologist with DIF&W is fond of saying, a thermometer tells the story well. Go out in the heat of summer and check brook temperatures. Any brook that stays 68 degrees or lower in a drought will have trout.
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News and Tidbits
Maine Flies With Real Lasting Power
Joe Sterling of Danforth invented Joe’s smelt and Wood special, and Ed Reif of Bangor originated the West Branch caddis, three of the last really nationwide-popular flies invented by Maine tiers. However, the jury is still out on a handful of flies concocted after those three.
Stripers in Trouble
Striped bass on the Atlantic coast generate an angling value of close to $2 billion and attract 3 million anglers. Brad Burns of Stripers Forever claims that despite these impressive figures showing the economic value of the species, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) is doing a poor job of protecting the resource.
“The spin message from ASMFC assessment is that striped bass are not being over-fished,” Burns said, “but as commercial and recreational removals continue at historically record levels, anglers from North Carolina to Maine are catching fewer and smaller stripers. …By every measurement, fishing mortality on stripers is rising and the spawning stock biomass is shrinking.”
Going Backwards
In the 1990s, fisheries biologists and bureaucrats at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife supported stricter fishing regulations statewide as well as in local waters. These days, the Department often exhibits an anti-regulations approach to fisheries science, breaking a rule best described by the British: Everyone’s fishing is no one’s fishing. …Which means if you allow the masses to fish pretty much any way they want, the resource suffers so badly that no one has decent fishing.
Whale Bones
One of New England’s lakes, Lake Champlain, dwarfs all others. It stretches 125 miles long and up to 14 miles wide and has an incredible maximum depth of 399 feet. One of the more impressive features about this lake came to light in 1848 when researchers found whale bones in it, evidence that salt water once filled the lake.
Large Island
Mount Desert Island covers 104 square miles, the largest island off the Maine coast. Glaciers sculpted the rounded, granite, mountain peaks, left glacial till and created long, narrow lakes. One geographical feature left by glaciers on this island is unique — the only fjord on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
Oldest Rocks
The oldest rocks in all of New England lie northwest of Eustis in the State of Maine. Called Chain Lake Massifs, these coarse-grain, banded gneisses date back 1.6 billion years and are a highly metamorphosed part of the foundation of North America.
Long-Gone Industry
Casual observers often think that many 19th century Maine dams, often piled-rock structures, served as making impoundments for sawmills, but this state’s abundant white ash trees supported myriad shovel-handle mills. The West Branch of the Sheepscot River and its tributaries have many rock dams originally built to make shovel handles, typical of so many drainages.
Maine’s Big!
At 33,215 square miles, Maine ranks as almost as large as the other five New England states put together.
Peat Galore
Maine has 750,000 peat bogs scattered across it.
Nature Watch
Whitetailed deer have large ears that can rotate toward suspicious sounds, enhancing their keen hearing. This deer species also has wide-set eyes, enabling them to focus on subtle movements, while maintaining an excellent sense of depth perception. They have a keen sense of smell, allowing them to detect danger, even in poor visibility. Their long graceful legs enable them to cover ground quickly by leaping, bounding, turning and outright running at speeds up to 40 mph. When erected, their trademark white tail flashes a danger signal to other deer in the vicinity.
Whitetail Forage
Deer consume grasses, sedges, ferns, lichens, mushrooms, weeds, aquatics, leaves (green and fallen), fruits, hard mast (acorns, beech nuts, etc.), grains, and twigs and buds of woody plants. Contrary to popular belief, deer consume twigs and buds of dormant trees and shrubs only when more nutritious foods are unavailable. When nutritious foods are unavailable deer are restricted to woody browse, deer inevitably lose weight.
Evening Grosbeak Irruption
This past winter, Maine saw one of the largest pine grosbeak irruptions that it has experienced in many years with the bulk of the sightings on the Mid-coast. Evening grosbeaks are quite common in Maine, those beautiful yellow-colored birds often seen picking on freshly sanded roads after a storm, but the pinkish-red pine grosbeaks prove less common.
Evolution Irrefutable
According to researchers, many traits that humans take pride in — the body parts and behaviors exalted as hallmarks of humanity — came from the most lowly of origins: fish.
How about our big, centralized brain encased in a protective bony skull with all the sensory organs conveniently attached? Fish invented this adaptation.
Fish first came up with pairs of sense organs such as two eyes for binocular vision, two ears to localize sounds and twinned nostrils so humans can follow their nose to freshly baked bread or the nape of a lover’s irresistibly immunocompatible neck.
Fish premiered the pairing of appendages, too, through fins on either side of the body that would someday flesh out into biceps, triceps, rotating wrists and opposable thumbs.
Or how about that animated mouth of yours, with its hinged and muscular jaws; it’s enameled, innervated teeth; and a tongue that dares to taste a peach or, if it must, get up and give a speech? Fish founded the whole modern bus we now ride.
Moose No Dummies
Wildlife researchers have concluded that moose are smart.
How smart?
According to an article in the New York Times for Feb. 12, 2008, as the population of grizzly bears have increased in Grand Teton National Park, they have become a threat to moose. In Alaska, grizzlies have been killing over half of the newborn moose calves. The moose in this national park have figured out a way to protect their offspring from these hungry predators.
Using radio collars on the moose, researchers have learned that each year, Grand Teton moose are moving about 375 feet closer to the roads when they are about to give birth. Grizzlies avoid the roads because that’s where humans and motor vehicles congregate. So when it’s time for the calf to be born, the moose goes where there are fewer grizzlies.
The moose are becoming wary of wolves, too. As wolf numbers have increased in Yellowstone National Park, they have also preyed on moose calves. Now if researchers sound a wolf howl over a loudspeaker, the moose become wary and move away.
This news that moose are smart won’t come as a surprise to Maine moose hunters, who have seen that our moose have learned to avoid roads and to move away when a vehicle stops.
Call ‘im ‘Shorty’
A pileated woodpecker stands 18 inches tall. If that does not impress you, consider a common puffin measures but 13 inches.
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Bird of the Month
American Robin
It would be difficult to imagine anyone with an average IQ who could not identify the ultra-common American robin (Turdus migratorius). These birds swarm across the state from very early spring to late fall, feeding on earthworms in lawns and fields.
During my childhood, most of my friends and I could quickly tell the difference between a male and female American robin at a glance, but these days, the younger generation often has no clue as to the gender — a real gender gap.
The slate-colored head on a male robin shows up quite dark compared to the back, which is a lighter gray. Astute observers also notice the dark tail, too. Females have a lighter colored head and tail that is the same shade as the back. The distinction about the male head shows up from great distances.
This 10-inch bird sports a 17-inch wingspan and weighs 2 3/4-ounces — almost large enough to eat. The eyes on both genders have a white circle edging the eye, and the male has a brick-red chest and the female rufous.
Robins feed heavily on earthworms but also eat insects, seeds, etc. In spring, crows forage equally as heavy on earthworms, but most folks don’t notice this preference.
Robins have a lovely song — a series of whistled notes with pauses that sounds like cheery-up…cheery-up repeated over and over with pauses.
(Ken Allen)
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Do You Sure,You’ve Heard Him,
But Have You Seen Him?
At the end of the month, anglers walking the banks in rich, deciduous bottomlands hear a lovely, flute-like bird song that sounds like ee-oo-lay…ee-oo-lay. The song is particularly prevalent in the quiet of evening. Do you know what bird makes this sound?
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Book Corner
Fly Fishing for Striped Bass
Did you ever see a book that was so technically perfect and such entertaining reading that it blew your mind? That’s a great description of Fly Fishing for Striped Bass by Rich Murphy (Wild River Press, Washington; www.wildriverpress.com).
For starters, photographers such as David Klausmeyer, Barry Beck, Thomas Pero and more helped the author with the graphics, and folks such as Klausmeyer, Beck and Pero are at the top of the heap for angling photographers. No one is better than these three fellows.
Beck can capture fishing scenes that make the rest of us with cameras feel inadequate, and Klausmeyer (who once wrote a fly-tying column for The Maine Sportsman) is the best of the best in shooting close-ups of flies and fly tying. When Pero was the editor of TU’s Trout magazine, he won several prestigious awards. Since Pero left Trout, it has never reached the heights it had established under this talented editor. You get the picture. These guys are tops in their field.
The binding of Fly Fishing for Striped Bass is rich, the print perfect, the editing superb and the finished product worthy of any coffee table, but this is not a coffee-table book. It contains solid information on how folks can make the best of their days, fishing for striped bass.
Fly Fishing for Striped Bass covers a pretty complete natural history of stripers, migratory information, striper flies, saltwater tackle, and tactics for fishing beaches, estuaries, rocks and flats. Murphy includes everything a beginner needs to know to get into this sport, and the author also has myriad advice for the veteran.
This reviewer doesn’t want to dwell on photographs and illustrations, but incredible art helps the reader understand Murphy’s concise, succinct prose. So many of the photos and illustrations are the best that I have ever seen.
Here’s an example of Murphy’s prose — a born teacher — on page 423. The backup illustrations after the short passage will wow readers:
Murphy wrote, “I usually begin my first interception pass across the interior of the flat in ankle-deep water so as to preclude the presence of any fish behind me. I make my stalk along this minimum-depth contour, my senses full on and wide open.”
Then, Murphy’s book has a huge photo spread across two pages, a full-page photo, a dynamite 1 1/2-page illustration and half-page sidebar to help readers understand the point in the 32-word passage! Yeah…wow! And I could go on and on.
Huge color photos and illustrations fill this book, something that was less common two decades ago. However, these days, publishers print books such as this one in Hong Kong where prices are much lower for printing jobs, making it feasible to print such jewels.
The book ain’t cheap — $59.95 — but it belongs in every fly-rod striper’s library. It’s a must-have book, folks, worth every penny of that near-$60 price tag. (Ken Allen)
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Answer to “Do You Know?”
Some May Say Drab, Others Say Beautiful
Fly rodders often call this bird the “fly-fishing bird” because the species sings during late April through mid-June when aquatic insects hatch and draw the slender-wand crowd to flowing waters. The wood thrush, a bird that looks drab in photos or paintings, makes the ee-oo-lay sound that is as much a part of fly-fishing as the equipment and fish themselves.
This thrush has a rich, reddish-brown back and head and a white chest and stomach, dotted with heavy dark spots. Like its near cousin, the robin, it has a white circle edging its eyes. This description may make this songbird sound drab, but it is remarkably beautiful when folks spot one up close and personal.
Another drab-sounding bird is the American woodcock, which also looks remarkably beautiful at close distance.
Next Month: Break Out Your Dry Flies, It’s Time for Hatches
No month shouts the two Maines quite like May. In the south country, it begins with a strong tinge of green, but by May 31, this state has turned as green as it ever gets. By July, verdant fields have turned golden, and foliage begins its long decline toward ragged looking by September.
In the north country, early May looks like early April in the bottom third of the state, and on May 1, the backside of ridges may still have snow and rivers and streams run full blast.
In Southern and Central Maine, hatches begin in earnest and fly rodders take advantage. Bait anglers do well, as do the hardware flingers. Yes, fishing just booms.
Northern Maine experiences ice-out mania and predictable, consistent hatches don’t begin until Memorial Weekend. By then, black flies swarm so brooks are hopping busy with brookies.
Mainers from Kittery to Fort Kent and from Rangeley to Lubec try to get gardens in before the month ends. Gardening is a big part of so many hunters and anglers lives, and why not? They’re all connected to the food-gathering process, and besides, did you ever see a good gardener who was a poor deer hunter?