Penobscot Valley Fishing Report: March 17, 2009
With nearly two weeks of the 2009 ice fishing season in the books, the reports from around the Penobscot Region are that ice is safe and the fishing has been fair to excellent. Waters stocked with fall yearling brook trout including Molunkus Lake, Upper Cold Stream Pond, Cold Stream Pond, and Upper Pond having been giving up good catches of fish on most days.
Salmon are biting at Pleasant Lake in Island Falls and East Grand Lake. However, anglers fishing in the eastern part of the region (West, Duck, Nicatous and Spring lakes) report that the salmon fishing has been a bit slow this year so far, but many believe that this is due to noise of the ice forming on lakes. Due to the recent cold snap and lack of snow the ice is building quickly and creating quite a racket out there. Hopefully once things settle down, the fish will start biting.
Both Schoodic Lake and Cold Stream Pond now have 6-10 inches of ice across the entire lake. I suspect lake trout enthusiasts will start pulling their ice shacks out to the deeper waters this week in hopes of catching a “lunker” togue. East Grand Lake continues to produce a quality lake trout fishery, and in recent years we’ve been hearing about some good sized cusk as well.
Regional personnel conducted creel checks this past weekend at Lower Sysladobsis Lake (Dobsis), Junior Lake, Scraggly Lake and Pleasant Lake, all located close to the Penobscot/Washington County line in Lakeville, Pukakon and Kossuth Townships. With ice thickness varying between 10 and 14 inches, ice shacks are sprouting up everywhere throughout the project area. Nice sunny weather and low wind brought good numbers of anglers looking for salmon, whitefish, lake trout and white perch. Anglers on Dobsis iced a number of salmon, mostly 3 year olds in the 16- to 17-inch category. Lake whitefish were the primary focus at Junior, with a couple fish hitting the 17-inch mark. A few togue were also reportedly taken from Junior in the first week of the season. Scraggly provided white perch action for a number of parties, as well as an occasional migrant salmon from fish stocked in Junior. Pleasant only had a couple of groups, but all had fast action for salmon in the 16 to 19 inch range. All anglers interviewed were having fair to good success, and most importantly, were having a great day out on the ice.
Finally, this past weekend the Maine Youth Fish and Game Club held its annual ice fishing event at Pickerel Pond. Nearly 200 young anglers participated this year, with many handsome fish being caught over the course of the day. While waiting for the flags to fly, the youngsters ate hot dogs, drank hot chocolate and took turns sliding down the hill out onto the pond.
