August 2008 Almanac
This Month: It’s the Sultry Month, But There’s Still Fish to Catch
August means blistering, humid days much of the time, but mornings have a crispness reminiscent of early fall, and at times, cold rains make biscuits and chowder a good choice for dinner — hot comfort food.
And, who can miss the scarlet leaves on an occasional red maple in a bottomland where, for some reason, nature decides to paint a little color early?
Bow hunters, rifle hunters, shotgun enthusiasts and black-powder nuts practice a lot in August, polishing their swing, trigger squeeze, string release and so forth. People who never practice shooting at other times of year really get into in August.
Early mornings attract folks into forests for scouting deer and bear. Folks with bird dogs work them in the cool air shortly after dawn, too. By 10 a.m., it can be hot enough to cook an egg on the hood of a truck, so by then, running dogs can be injurious to the feather finder’s health.
Higher elevation ponds in Northern Maine still have predictable evening hatches, and die-hard brook-trout anglers know this fact all too well. They’re out and at it hard.
Catch-and-release types who throw back all their salmonids often catch mackerel, white perch, school stripers, bluefish and other warm-water or ocean critters for the grill, fry pan or freezer this month.
Black-bass enthusiasts who know how to work a jig deeply do well now, hauling slab-sides off bottom structure. These guys are C&R fanatics all the way.
Gardens start producing the staples before August ends — corn, squash, potatoes, carrots, onions, beans and other hearty veggies. This month pays off big for folks who planted while swatting black flies and then weeded and tilled in the hot sun of late spring and summer. Now, this work makes just one more example of the food-gathering process before folks tip over a big-game animal or two in fall.
Photographers cannot miss now, because the sultry air and light help created wonderful mood shots in scenic images. Wildlife photography slows now, though, because baby critters are losing their cuteness and mama and papa do not move much except after dark.
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Tips of the Month
Dawn Is the Right Time Out to Sea
This month, tidal rivers often warm so much that it chases striped bass back into the open ocean. Wise striper anglers follow them, so folks who may pound places such as the Kennebec, Sheepscot and New Meadows rivers in June and into July head for spots like Casco Bay by Portland or St. Johns Bay by Pemaquid in late July and August to find roving stripers in the cooler ocean environment.
Hitting the open sea in the first gray light of dawn produces the most action, action that lasts until about 8 a.m. In this sport, the early bird does get the worm. As the sun rises higher and higher, action often slows considerably.
Fly Fisherman: Go Lightly for Best Action
Cream and light-olive caddises and mayflies dominate now because these colors and variations of them offer great camouflage for mid-to late summer when newly hatching duns fly to shore and hide under leaves, which have light-olive to whitish shades as June’s lush greens fade. Cream also reflects summer sun better, also explaining these lighter shades. Early spring flies are dark grays or browns to absorb the sun’s heat.
Because cream and olive prevail in summer, astute observers use imitations of the same shades to match the naturals. Now is no time to leave home the box of tiny cream or olive dries, emergers and nymphs.
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Where the Action Is
Sandy River Is a Floater’s Dream
These days in Maine, kayaks outsell canoes nine to one, but whether folks have kayaks or canoes, a wonderful river to float this month lies northwest of Farmington — the Sandy River between Phillips and Strong. Some of my two daughters’ most fond memories while growing up took place on this stretch of river, where we poled upstream from Devil’s Elbow just above Strong. The water warms in August and the gravel stays clean and weed-free — ideal conditions for stopping occasionally to swim. Bring a lunch and make a day of it. Check DeLorme’s The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer (MAG), Map 19, B-4.
Rockland Breakwater for Great Ocean Access
Folks without a boat who want to fish for mackerel and other ocean pan fish can sport on the mile-long Rockland Breakwater (MAG, Map 14, E-3), where public access and easy walking gives folks ample places to fish. This breakwater lies northeast of downtown Rockland and has attracted sports anglers for over 100 years.
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News and Tidbits
Ouch! That Wolf Bite Hurts!
North America has 65,000 wolves, and 5,500 of them live in the contiguous United States. In the Lower 48, 25 wolves inhabit 150 square miles, but in Canada and Alaska, it’s 300 wolves per 1,000 square miles.
Montana will have a wolf season in 2008, and the bag limit is one animal. It’s a fall season, and baits, scents, lures, hounds, night hunting, aerial gunning or spotting are illegal.
The bite of a human is 300 pounds per square inch (psi), a large dog 750 psi and a wolf 1,500 psi.
Paper or Plastic for Bait?
A person who sells bait may not provide or sell the bait in containers that are composed in whole or in part of polystyrene foam plastic. This does not apply to baitfish.
Americans Want Offshore Oil
What does the average American think of offshore drilling? AOL, the world’s largest Internet host, runs daily surveys that draw a wide cross-section of participants. In mid-June, AOL asked their members two questions: 1) Would they favor U.S. offshore drilling for oil and gas? 2) Do they think it would lower gas prices? Three of four wanted to see offshore drilling and seven of 10 thought it would lower prices.
Ramp Dam No Obstacle
Two researchers with the help of 28 volunteers trapped fish just after they had ascended a ramp-style dam on the St. George River and captured 47,000 alewives as well as myriad brook trout and brown trout that measured 4- to 16-inches. Apparently, this style dam works great for those three species to ascend.
Pellet Stove Plenty Good News
When Mainers hear pellet-stove dealers and owners talk about this product, they often think the claims sound too good to be true, making them suspicious. Pellet stoves really are too good to be true, though. Owners can set them near a wall, need not build a traditional chimney, and the BTU output can heat a house. The biomass pellets that fuel these stoves are manufactured in Maine, and folks who own plants that makes these pellets are rapidly expanding their operation to keep up with demand. In the process, they are creating more jobs.
Trout Like High Water
Maine has seen several rainy summers in a row, and fisheries biologists at the DIF&W have noticed that this abnormal weather has turned rivers, streams and brooks with marginal salmonid spawning habitat into waters with good reproduction. Just as an example, two researchers on the St. George River trapped browns and brookies that were much smaller than the stocked fish, proving that at least the tributaries were producing fish.
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Bird of the Month
Red-Tailed Hawk
A few years ago, during the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, my counting partner Bill Woodward and I were heading down a country road in Sidney that sliced straight across farm fields when a dead, bark-less elm in a pasture caught our eye. What had once been huge limbs and tall top had broken off in heavy winds through the years, leaving thick stubs. On the end of one limb sat a magnificent red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis), quite a find for the bird count.
The following year during this one-day birding extravaganza, Woodward and I were heading down the same road and talking about that hawk when the elm came into sight. Little to our surprise, a red-tailed hawk occupied the same broken limb, probably the same bird, illustrating how this species goes to the same perch year after year. We both knew about this trait so the bird being there struck us as typical behavior — but a neat occurrence just the same.
Not to belabor the point, but back in the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, a redtail used to perch in a tree beside the Maine turnpike in Lewiston. Maybe you have seen it yourself. It chose a tree on the north side of the southbound lane by Exit 80. I’d look for the hawk each time near this exit and saw it often enough there to impress passengers riding with me. They thought I had super eyesight to see a bird while driving down the road.
Sizes impress humans, and one feature of this hawk captures our imagination — the wing spread. It measures 49 inches — over four feet. The body runs from 19 to 25 inches long and looks even larger because of the thick body and big, sort of blocky head. It weighs 2 1/2-pounds.
In the 1940s and 1950s when Hollywood was even less interested in accuracy than movie people are now, they would dub in the cry of a redtail for a bald eagle because the keeeer-r-r squeal of this rufous-tailed hawk is much more dramatic than the call of America’s symbol.
If the tail looks rufous, even in sunlight, why is it called “red”? The answer goes back to Great Britain in the dark ages when dyes were inadequate. Folks would be trying for a bright red, and it would come out a brownish-red — hence the term red for rufous. Folks really notice these misnomers in fly-tying lingo.
This bird prefers eating small rodents, so it’s an important species to humans for keeping the vole-mouse-lemming population in check. Naturalists cannot imagine why anyone would want to do a rodent-eater harm.
Dark morphs in this species are rare east of the Mississippi River, and this hawk can look quite light in sunlight. It has a brownish back and wings and reddish-tan chest and head. The rufous tail makes it easy to identify — a buteo that loves to soar in high, wide circles. (Ken Allen)
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Do You Know?
America’s Symbol Reaches Wide
Do you know how wide the wingspread is on a bald eagle?
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Book Corner
Tagewanahn
When Dennis LeBare was writing Tagewahnahn with the subtitle The Landlocked Salmon at Grand Lake Stream, he mentioned the project several times on Fly Fishing in Maine, an Internet bulletin board. Many of us saw this and awaited LeBare’s book with great anticipation.
For anyone paying attention, it was obvious that this skilled fly rodder, entomologist and historian was working on a labor of love about his home river. This book reviewer just knew Tagewahnahn would be a jewel.
In short, LeBare wasn’t a commercial writer trying to make a buck, but rather, a man interested in chronicling a water that means the world to him. The result shows this dedication.
LeBare breaks the book into seven parts and an epilogue, beginning with a study of landlocked salmon, this species origins and distribution, spawning and so forth — a rather complete natural history of landlocked Salmo salar. LeBare then goes into a history of Grand Lake Stream and information on its characteristics and pool names, a chapter on the history of the hatchery complete with a photo essay of fall egg capture, history of the dam, a great chapter on GLS’s insect hatches and a summary of the media, celebrities, local personalities, etc. of the river.
This reviewer absolutely loved the chapter about celebrities who have gone to Grand Lake Stream — everyone from John Randolph Hearst to Don Zahner to you name a big-time fishing writer from the 20th century. Most of ‘em were there.
This last chapter before the epilogue is entertaining to the core and tells of a time when Maine attracted all the big-name outdoors people in the — well — in the world. Sometimes, folks criticize Maine for not keeping its standing as the place to go, but in a way, Maine didn’t lose its quality so much as more wilderness areas of the world developed tourism meccas that this state could no longer compete with in a global market.
LeBare’s book has lots of historical data that show Maine might have had a few bigger salmon in the near to distant past, but overall, the size of the fish have changed little.
Tagewahnahn includes figures from Charles Atkins’ Commissioner’s Report of 1877 — an intriguing tidbit of information that included 235-male and 343-female landlocks. In 1877, the average length and weight of male salmon were 16.8 inches and 1.8 pounds respectively and of females were 16.1 inches and 1.9 pounds. In this report, the longest salmon was 22 inches and heaviest was 3.7 pounds! (There wasn’t a 4-pounder in the 578 landlocks.) The shortest salmon was 13 inches and lightest adult 1.1 pounds. Stats like this fill this book and illustrate that the good old days might be here and now.
LeBare has lots of personal little touches in the book that’ll touch a memory, and one for me was his reference to Fly Fisherman magazine. When this publication first hit newsstands in the late 1960s, most of us baby boomers can remember where we were and what we were doing the second we saw it. (It’s like asking people what they were doing when John Kennedy was shot.) LeBare’s dad brought home the second issue, and he remembers the moment. Like Dennis, my initial introduction also came with the second issue, which I bought at a bookstore in downtown Orono in 1969.
Ah…the memories…and Tagewahnahn will generate plenty. (Ken Allen)
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Innocent Bystander
Hatchery Fish Important to Salmonid Program
Maine has more fly-fishing-only (FFO) waters than any other state in the Union, and it’s interesting to note that fisheries biologists from the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIF&W) “inherited” the vast majority of them.
The old Department of Fish and Game started hiring biologists circa 1950. In the first half of the 20th century when the Department had no field biologists, sporting-camp and lodge operators pushed for the FFO regulations. In the last 50 to 60 years since this state agency started a fisheries-biologist division, these professionals are more apt to push for artificial lures only than fly-fishing only — not a criticism but rather an observation.
Speaking of regulations…. Maine’s fisheries biologists in the last several decades have reduced the general daily bag limit for salmonids and black bass so low that it’s darned hard to find another state or province with lower general bag limits or even ones equal to ours.
True baby boomers born in 1946 and ’47 remember when anglers could kill 12 brook trout per day. Folks who fished in the mid 1940s and before then recall a 25-brookie limit.
These days, the brook-trout limit has dropped to two in ponds and lakes in 10 counties, including Franklin, one of the most brook-trout-rich counties in Maine. The landlocked-salmon, rainbow-trout and brown-trout limit is two per day statewide. Many blue-ribbon salmon waters have a one-fish limit.
Here’s another point about Maine fishing regulations:
Bait anglers often complain that artificial lures and fly fishing only discriminate against them. Fisheries biologists initiate tackle restrictions when they create regulations that force anglers to release fish because bait-caught salmonids and black bass have a low survival rate after being hooked and played.
Maine’s DIF&W has a stocking budget of a little over $2 million annually, and with that money, its hatchery division stocks salmonids statewide. The majority of stocked waters, particularly in the southern third of the state, have limited to no reproduction. In short, without hatchery fish, there would be no trout or salmon fishing.
Many activists criticize DIF&W fisheries biologists for stocking over wild brook trout, but the biologists claim they stock over wild populations that cannot sustain a recreational fishery, even with strict regulations. They also say that it’s easy to measure spawning habitat to know how many fish each can produce. (Ken Allen)
Next Month: September Means Great Fishing and Hunting
September in Maine means paradise. In the bottom third of the state, it’s still summer but evenings, nights and dawns are cool, even chilled, but by 10 a.m., it feels like July again. In the upper two thirds, fall drifts on the prevalent northwest winds.
From Kittery to Fort Kent, though, the sky stays cerulean much of the time, particularly in the morning, and the light looks ever so sweet — as sweet as anyplace in the world, explaining why oil painters have flocked to the Pine Tree State for two centuries.
Rains bring trout and salmon up rivers and large streams in the North Country, and they also spread brookies out in brooks. Anglers take advantage and name rivers can be crowded now.
Brookie ponds in the North Country produce well once these char decide to strap on the feedbag before the more strenuous period of the spawn — when they do not eat much. Hatches are much less predictable now than in summer and certainly in late spring.
Trollers on northern lakes also do well catching togue, salmon and brookies. In Southern and Central Maine lakes and large ponds, browns and bass move into shallows at dawn and evening, and folks in the know have great action.
Bear season draws folks north to sit in conifer thickets near beech ridges. This sport spurs the North Country’s economy because bear hunters are big spenders — say as opposed to canoeists, kayakers and backpackers. And don’t forget, it’s the beginning of moose hunting too.
A handful of folks in the South Country who have rifle-hunted all their lives now bow hunt for deer in the expanded archery zone, and some of them are killing five to 10 deer per year.
Black powder has beat out archery in license sales, though, and lots of these folks are shooting now. They’re pounding away at targets and perfecting accuracy.
Clay sports are popular now as is skeet and trap, and smoothbore enthusiasts are practicing their swing and follow through.
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Answer to “Do You Know?
It’s Wider Than a Man Is Tall
The wingspread on a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leuocephalus) measures 80 inches — nearly seven feet. This eagles needs this wingspan to propel its 10-pound weight through the area. This eagle stretches 31 inches from head to tail, and the thick body with the folded wings and blocky head make it look even larger. The white head on the adult makes them easy to ID.
