May 2009 Almanac
This Month: ‘No Mayflies,’ You Say
Afternoon mayfly hatches begin this month in the bottom third of the state, and fly fishing rocks, which brings up a quick digression:
Back in March, posters on fly-fishing bulletin boards in Maine were complaining that Maine had no aquatic-insect hatches.
…No hatches?
Many of us in the Pine Tree State live for spring’s afternoon hatches and time our outings to coincide with these predictable, annual events.
Hendricksons, red quills (the male version of the Hendrickson), size 14 blue-winged olives, Drunella cornuta and a few caddis species hatch on May afternoons in the lower third of the state and create winter memories. Many of us in Central and Southern Maine pine for these hatches all winter.
It gets no better than a red-quill/Hendrickson hatch on a river when the shoreline still looks drab and brown and lifeless — but the river looks alive with dimpling fish.
From July through September, this writer has fished a 10 a.m. blue-winged olive (BWO) hatch for 30 years and in October and November a 2 p.m. BWO emergence consistently for 12 years.
Trollers in the South Country find salmonids between the surface and 20 feet — seldom deeper — so life looks good for this crowd, too. Trolling proves wicked popular in the Pine Tree State.
Ice-out occurs in the North Country and folks love trolling, which produces some of the bigger fish of the year.
Shortly after ice-out, alder leaves reach the size of mouse ears and black flies swarm, the perfect time to catch a mess of brook trout from a brook or stream.
In the South Country, particularly during unseasonably warm springs, brookies start moving into deep holes and springs now.
Folks often shoot a lot in spring — riflemen, shotgunners, archers and plinkers with .22 rimfires. Some folks get after those distant brown dots to perfect trigger squeeze on a live target. Don’t forget to eat those woodchucks, though, in the spirit of Thoreau.
Vehicle camping, backpacking and canoe tripping begins in earnest but wow, the bugs and mud prove a nightmare for a while. Those crisp nights in front of a campfire make it all worthwhile, as the cold chases black flies and mosquitoes under shelter until morning.
Folks plant gardens this month, and many of them are superb deer hunters who know gardening works as an important part of a lifestyle that includes food gathering. They also get a few messes of white perch, mackerel and a baking striper each summer.
Wild-food gathering begins this month, picking fiddleheads. In Aroostook’s limestone belt, mushroomers find morels before the month ends, and few fungi get much better than that. Potherbs and new roots interest knowledgeable pickers now.
Yup, May in Maine means a slice of heaven for outdoors folks.
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TIPS OF THE MONTH
Winter Left Plenty of Campfire Wood
In campsites this month, wood from falling branches during winter’s ice and wind dots the ground, giving the first campers a plentiful sup—ply. Oak, beech, rock maple and yellow birch prove particularly good for campfire coals.
Also, campsites along streams with alders also have plenty of broken alder sticks on the bank, a great wood for burning because it produces a fierce heat. In fact, old timers called dry alder “biscuit wood” because such a high heat baked biscuits well.
Alder also produces great coals. The average camper does not pick up alder for firewood, thinking it probably burns like moss in a wet, shaded cemetery — a mistake.
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Power Casting and Dry Flies
Power casting and dry flies don’t mix well because long casts often cause a subtle drag on the fly that is difficult to see without watching something floating beside the offering. Sneaking up close to rising fish and using short casts works much better to keep a consistent bend in the rod.
Here’s another point about power casting, particularly noticeable when the caster uses dry flies. It’s common for the leader to land parallel to the line with the dry fly well behind the fly-line’s tip, a point this writer has noticed while watching with binoculars, a common practice for some folks to see rising fish at long distances.
Here’s how the leader lands parallel to the fly line:
1) The leader’s butt should be 60 percent to 66 percent the diameter of the fly line. If it is smaller, a hinging effect occurs between the fly-line tip and leader, and the line does not turn the leader over.
2) Poor timing with the cast aggravates this problem of the leader landing parallel to the line. If the caster perfects the timing so the line turns the leader over on the cast, this ends the problem.
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WHERE THE ACTION IS
What a Smorgasbord!
In recent years in May and part way through June, The Spillway Pool in Belgrade Lakes village has become a perennial hotspot for catching big browns, pike, salmon, and brookies, in that order. Furthermore, on rare occasions, anglers might catch a crappie or walleye. Earlier in May, folks set up to catch white perch often land plenty of them.
Check DeLorme’s The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer (MAG), Map 20, E-4. Route 27 goes through the village, and near the north end of the little hamlet within sight of Day’s Store lies a bridge. Belgrade Stream flows under it and spills through the dam on the west side of the road. Below is the pool.
Don’t expect solitude here, but the anglers prove a congenial group and friendships form. Folks use flies, hardware and bait here and all of them catch fish.
One of the oddest features of the pool concerns flies. Small ones in the size 16 to 20 range often work best once micro hatches start in early June — hard bugs to see in the fierce current when the dam operator opens the gate.
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Quimby Ice-Out
When the ice goes out of Quimby Pond in early May, this fly-fishing-only water with a motor prohibition attracts folks who want to catch brookies that run from 8- to 18-inches. Silence rules on this pond nestled between highlands rising from the water.
At ice-out, Black Ghosts, chartreuse Wooly Buggers, weighted Muddlers and black Wooly Buggers, in that order, take brook trout. A favorite Black Ghost among the regulars has a white hair wing rather than feathers or marabou. Calf-tail or polar bear make a great hair wing.
Shallow spots on the pond where sunlight hits get insects and baitfish moving and in turn attract trout. Enough anglers hit this pond for newcomers to watch and see where many of the veterans have action.
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NEWS AND TIDBITS
Unintended Consequences with Nature’s Balance
Maine has many invasive species, but before we attempt to eradicate established ones, we need to think the equation through.
A pristine habitat on the other side of the world offers a prefect example of why:
Twenty-one-mile long Macquarie Island lies halfway between Australia and Antarctica and has become a glaring example of what can happen when humans attempt to eradicate invasive species.
In this instance, during the early 19th century, sailors had introduced non-native cats, and in 1878, seal hunters let rabbits loose. Cats ate the rabbits and a tenuous balance existed for a while.
However, the rabbit population grew to 100,000 and destroyed the island habitat, so in 1968, scientists introduced the deadly Myxoma virus, which reduced rabbit numbers significantly. The cats began preying on the island’s burrowing seabird species, creating a new problem the scientists had not foreseen.
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Maine’s Forest Acreage Increasing
The latest inventory of Maine’s forests shows the state is growing 15 percent more wood than it is harvesting each year. That’s a substantial change from the 2003 inventory, when cutting exceeded growth by 3 percent.
In fact, Kenneth M. Laustsen, well-known by Maine’s forest industry, said, “We know how to grow wood. In the last 50-plus years, the standing inventory [of timber in the Maine Woods] has increased 93 percent.”
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We Got Trees!
Maine forests cover 90 percent of its surface, making it the most heavily wooded state in the nation.
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Smelt Dipping Time Frame
Lots of Mainers are unaware of the time frame for dipping smelts. Dippers cannot start until 12 noon, and they have until 2 a.m. the next morning. (Although it is unusual, people do dip in daylight hours.)
The reason for this law involves an old poaching tactic. One person would dip his limit before 12 midnight and then get a second limit after midnight — technically the second day. Then, he or she would do the same thing the following night and subsequent nights. Wardens figured out that the way to stop this practice would be having a time frame as it is now.
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Is Driving Deer Legal?
Speaking of laws….
The Maine hunting regulations booklet says, “Driving deer or taking part in a deer drive is unlawful, except that three or fewer persons may hunt together without the aid of noisemaking devices. Driving deer is an organized or planned effort to pursue, drive, chase or otherwise frighten or cause deer to move in the direction of any person(s) who are part of the organized or planned hunt and known to be waiting for the deer.”
Does the wording confuse you?
Can you or can you not drive deer?
The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife deliberately made the wording confusing because officials disagreed with the Legislative law to allow driving with three or less people.
In truth, driving deer is perfectly legal in Maine within bounds of the law. Period.
And just for the record, there are few places in the entire world that prohibit driving game animals. In fact, this writer does not know of one place where it is illegal to drive deer.
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Maine Has a Lotta’ Mayflies!
Maine has 162 mayfly species and counting, more than any other state in the nation. This is typical of fauna and flora in a state that lies on the northern edge of one type of habitat and southern edge of another — rich diversity.
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Bluebacks Need Protection
Landlocked arctic char, often called blueback trout, exist in so few ponds in this state that a logical person must wonder why this species has not made it onto the Endangered Species List. When folks consider the population number of this species in Maine, literally in the extremely low, low thousands, the blueback proves far more rare than many critters already on the list now.
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Tufted Titmice Common Now
True baby boomers born shortly after World War II remember of growing up in Maine when tufted titmice lived south of Kittery. These days, tufted titmice flit across the state, and in fact, in Central Maine, they have established an abundant population. In places such as Belgrade Lakes village, titmice visit birdfeeders off and on all day.
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Turkey Vultures, Too
As baby boomers were growing up, no one ever saw a turkey vulture in Maine. If someone did, it ranked as a rare sighting indeed. These days, turkey vultures have become common, quite an addition to our fauna.
About 17 years ago in a Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s Advisory Council meeting, an Advisory Council member asked a wildlife biologist if “we” could shoot turkey vultures. The biologist, apparently a natural-born smart aleck, said, “No, and you can’t shoot loons or bald eagles, either.”
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BIRD OF THE MONTH
Blackburnian Warbler Brightens Anglers’ Days
Last May, my oldest daughter, Heather, and I were fly-fishing a small river that tumbled and bounced between alder-lined banks that occasionally held Blackburnian warblers (Dendroica fusca), a strikingly beautiful songbird that added much to the outing.
Photos or paintings do this species no justice, particularly the male. In spring, he sports a throat, crown patch and eyebrow of flaming orange and black and white covers the rest of the bird — mostly black. It does have a large white wing patch, though. The female has a yellow throat, pale yellow head stripes, and dark gray and white body — mostly gray.
The body makes this bird sound drab, but the male really catches the eye with the flaming orange and pure, contrasting black and white. This little guy will stop folks in their tracks to look.
Probably the American redstart ranks the only other warbler that looks as conspicuous, but that claim certainly could start an argument because some of the warblers with yellow catch the eye.
This bird measures five inches long, weighs one-third ounce and sports an 8 1/2-inch wingspan. The wingspan slightly exceeds most of the other warbler species, but the body length runs similar to most.
As warblers go, the Blackburnian has an especially slender appearance and a thin, dark bill. The colors, though, make it so easy to identify.
In summer, this warbler likes mixed-growth forests, particularly conifers, and it’s a common part of my fly-fishing experience on my home river. In May, this bird flits around alders beneath towering spruce, hemlocks and oaks.
According to Roger Tory Peterson, its thin, wiry song sounds like this: zip, zip, zip, titi, tseee, increasing in speed. The tseee rises to the limit of what the human ear can hear. This bird also makes a two-part teetsa, teetsa, teetsa, teetsa, zizizizizizi. These sounds punctuate afternoons along my river as trout rise to hatching mayflies.
Blackburnian warblers build twig nests high in conifers and line the structure with lichen, mosses and hair before laying four eggs with brown spots. Four eggs suggest Blackburnian parents have a high survival with their young. (Ken Allen)
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DO YOU KNOW?
Who Shouldn’t Eat Fish?
Do you know what groups of people should not eat fish from Maine’s inland waters because of mercury concentrations?
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BOOK CORNER
Seymour’s Book Rivals A Sand County Almanac
This reviewer has read A Sand County Almanac twice and thinks Tom Seymour’s new work, A Hidden World Revealed with the subtitle Musings of a Maine Naturalist, equals Leopold’s classic.
For starters, Leopold died 61 years ago, so A Hidden World Revealed gives us a more modern rendering of Leopold’s age-old truths about nature. Seymour’s book gave this reviewer a more immediacy of the moment that a much older book cannot duplicate. (Even E.B. White’s One Man’s Meat had some great stuff that has turned into tired clichés.)
For finishers, Seymour has lived life close to nature in a small cottage far off a dirt road. He feeds himself from the woods and waters, doctors himself with herbs, heats his home with wood cut from his own land and works as a professional writer, not a part-time scribe as so many other naturalists have done.
This reviewer has edited Seymour for 21 years and has noticed his striving for perfection in his craft and art. The man creates short, crisp images that put the reader into the scene, chooses fresh action verbs rather than tired, worn linking verbs, avoids passive voice and keeps I to a minimum. (Lazy writers use I too often, a turnoff to readers.) The result of his pains jumps off the page.
Even folks who have no clue about imagery, verbs and voices can understand good writing compared to bad. One soars; the other falters.
To make another comparison in lifestyles…. Thoreau lived on Walden Pond for two years. Tom has lived in his cottage for over 30 years, where woods crowd his backdoor, coyotes keep him up at night and turkeys wake him in the morning. Seymour doesn’t live in the woods to make a point to polite society; he knows no other way.
Hidden World Revealed began as a blog, so each week, Seymour would pen two or three of them as the anecdotes and thoughts were happening. I was reading the blog and suggested he make it into a book. The rest is history.
Seymour’s book comes straight from Maine, too, including the publisher, Just Write Books from Topsham. The telephone is 207-729-3600 and the web site www.jstwrite.com.
One of the weirdest things about the book, though, is this:
I have a copy meant for bookstores, and it has no price on it. Even Tom has no idea of the price, and he can’t get the publisher as of this writing because she’s in Japan. It’s a paperback with few photos, though, so it should be affordable.
Do not miss this one. I hope a national publisher picks it up because A Hidden World Revealed deserves a wider reader audience. (Ken Allen)
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INNOCENT BYSTANDER
Maine Sits on the Brink of Success
These days, two movements in Maine are wildly exciting and should fatten state-government revenues and our residents’ wallets, perhaps making us one of the richest states in the nation:
1) …Harnessing wind power with windmills placed in the ocean beyond the horizon so no one can complain about the eyesore. The number of windmills that entrepreneurs are talking about would replace multiple nuclear power plants in energy output, and some of the leaders in the project from the University of Maine say once the project has enough windmills in place, Mainers can cheaply heat their homes with electricity and producers can sell surplus electricity to people living in states south of here.
2) Maine has a higher percentage of forest habitat than any other state in the nation, around 90 percent or a little higher, and we could easily become a major producer of wood pellets, creating numerous jobs. We could ship pellets across the nation and perhaps the world, and right now, at least one wood-pellet producer in Corinth makes one of the world’s best pellets.
This seems like somewhat new technology in the U.S., but citizens and industries in countries in Europe such as Sweden and Austria, just to name two, have relied heavily on wood-pellet stoves and furnaces for over 30 years.
(Just for the record, this writer heated his home with wood pellets this past winter and saved nearly $3,000 compared to the previous year’s oil bill, not counting the initial investment of the stove — $2,400.) The best part of wood-pellet production is this:
Hard or softwood works equally well, and cutting practices to fuel wood-pellet facilities improve habitat for deer, moose, grouse and other game critters. In short, the business enriches the state financially while improving hunting — the best of both worlds. (Ken Allen)
Next Month: Maine Compares to Ireland’s Viridescence
Maine Compares to Ireland’s Viridescence
June in Maine erupts with a viridescence that can make a grown man cry. With apologies to Ireland, the Pine Tree State should be called the Emerald State. Foliage has a rich, verdant freshness and fields look greener than green and ripple in afternoon winds. When the sun shines, the landscape sparkles.
Fly rodders in the northern half of the state live for June because predictable pond hatches create memories for winter, and salmonids run up major rivers and streams, creating first-class riverine angling.
In the bottom half of the state, striped bass arrive, and this year should be a good one. Last year’s awful striper season was the result of bass stopping south of here to hit a sand eel bloom, but this year, that shouldn’t happen and we’ll be in the gravy.
Black bass are spawning now and fishing for smallmouths and largemouths gets as good as it ever gets. Maine has strict bass regulations, and in fact, we have stricter bass regs than we do for salmonids. This saves bass during the spawn so the resource continues to flourish.
Salmonids in the South Country swim in somewhat shallow water in June and offer folks fast fishing, particularly those anglers who know how to fish down to 20 feet.
Camping, hiking and canoe tripping hits full swing now, particularly after school’s summer vacation starts. When children accompany mom and dad, memories of the outing become lifelong images.
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Answer to “Do You Know?”
These Groups Should Avoid Eating Fish
Because of mercury concentrations, pregnant and nursing women, women who may get pregnant and children under eight should eat no freshwater fish from Maine’s inland waters. The only exceptions to the no-eat rule are these: These vulnerable people can consume one meal per month of landlocked salmon or brook trout.
All other adults and children older than 8 years old can eat two freshwater fish meals per month. If these folks eat brook trout or landlocked salmon, they can eat one fish meal per week.
Mercury in the fish created this statewide warning, and even waters in semi-wilderness areas such as the Allagash have a mercury problem because this toxin comes here on air currents.
Certain waters have other problems such as PCBs, dioxins or DDT, and the fishing-regulations booklet contains the list.
For more information on toxins in freshwater fish, call toll free 866-292-3474 or visit http://www.maine.gov/dhhs/eohp/fish/saltwater.htm
