September 2009 Almanac
This Month: Try to Remember … Sweet, Sweet September
No month has light like September as humidity gives way to crystal-clear air, electric-blue skies and sunlight sweet enough to rival any other spot in the world — an oil-painter’s delight. It has drawn world-class artists for two centuries or more, and we get to see it for nothing while wandering in the woods and on the waters in this grand state.
In the not-too-distant past, September in Maine was a lazy month. A handful of dedicated fly rodders got out for a last hurrah, but mostly, folks were waiting for hunting season the following month.
That’s not the case anymore. September keeps us hopping as fall fishing skyrockets in popularity and crowds form around name waters — big crowds…hotdog-cart-sized crowds. Not only do salmonids attract us to water, but so do black bass, stripers, groundfish far out in the Atlantic, blue and mako sharks and more.
Hunting for rails and snipes, deer in the expanded archery zones and bear (the savior of the North Woods economy), scouting for deer, shooting smoothbores, rifles, bows and arrows all vie for attention.
A lack of bugs makes car camping, canoe tripping and backpacking a joy, day hiking excites many folks, picnicking in the perfect weather titillates legions, photographing scenic and wildlife images in the sweet light get folks out, bicycling in the warm afternoons before the frigid days begin in October, and even just shopping at outlets create happy memories to carry us through a brutal Maine winter later.
Yes, we’re all busy this month, the weather proves perfect much of the time and life feels mighty good. Indeedy, Maine is the way life should be, just like the commercial says, and September underscores that philosophy.
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Tips of the Month
•Shooting Sticks Help Accuracy
Folks watching outdoors television see plenty of hunters in Africa with shooting sticks in the form of a homemade tripod — a common hunting tool on that continent. And…easy to make. Buy three, 1-inch dowels four feet long and drill a small hole six inches down from one end on each stick of wood. Then, run a wire through the three holes to fasten the tripod together. The shooter spreads the legs to adjust the height and lays the rifle in the “V” shape at the top.
•Bean-Hole Bean Time
Bean-hole beans cooked in a cast-iron Dutch oven with three small legs on the bottom and a recessed cover smack of tradition. This meal cooks in a hole completely covered with coals and then dirt, so the chef completely seals the baking utensil, keeping those bean, onion, mustard, ginger and molasses flavors trapped in the oven. The result — a heavenly dish that makes people stare off toward the horizon when they discuss such a repast.
Begin by digging a hole at least three times deeper than the height of the oven and at least one foot wider in diameter. Line the bottom and sides with flat, volcanic or granite rocks. Fill the hole with hardwood such as rock maple, beech or oak and keep the fire burning until the hole fills three-quarters full of coals.
Gather the following: One-pound of navy beans, washed and soaked overnight, 1-pound salt pork or fat bacon, 3/4-cup molasses, 1/2-teaspoon ginger, 1 heaping teaspoon dry mustard, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2-teaspoon pepper and one quartered onion and cover with warm water. Stir well. Place the cover on carefully and then put aluminum foil over the oven so dirt doesn’t accidentally spill into the beans.
Dig out the coals but leave a bed on bottom, place the Dutch oven in the hole and cover it with the surplus coals. Cover the whole thing with dirt, round it right up and cook for eight hours. When the cover and foil comes off, be prepared for a heavenly aroma of molasses and cooked beans — all reminiscent of baking squash or pumpkin. Serve with hot tea, biscuits, coleslaw and perhaps venison steak — the poor man’s meal: venison and beans.
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Where the Action Is
•Four Silver Mines
Two hours of driving can get anglers to four landlocked-salmon rivers that offer a bonus of brookies, too, but the “silver mines” bring most of the fly rodders there.
Three of the salmon rivers flow into or out of Moosehead Lake — the Moose (DeLorme’s The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer MAG, Map 40, A-5), East Outlet of the Kennebec (Map 40, B-5) and Roach (Map 41, B-4 and B-3). The fourth lies one hour northeast of the Roach — the West Branch of the Penobscot River below Ripogenus Dam (Map 50, D-3).
These four waters attract huge crowds each September, and why not? Landlocked salmon and brook trout in calendar-photo settings of tumbling, rushing rapids, gravel-bottomed glides and big pools produce an undeniable appeal.
September crowds assure newcomers that they can quickly decipher the rivers by observing others and asking questions. Loners can find solitude in the willy-wags.
Top flies include patterns with orange in them. Those choices would include Wood Special, Cardinelle or Slaymaker’s Little Brook Trout. The usual array of fall flies take salmonids — Wooly Buggers, smelt imitations, Elk Hair Caddis, Soft Hackles, caddis emergers, huge nymphs, Pheasant Tail, Zug Bug, Hare’s Ear and more.
•Delightful Fall Hiking
As September edges toward October and leaves turn crimson, orange, yellow and more, a wonderful family hike begins on Map 14, D-4 — Camden Hills State Park.
To reach park trails, drive east through Camden village on Route 1 and then turn left (north) to Mount Battie. This spot is well-marked with signs, where hikers can pick up a map. Another access point begins by going north onto Route 52 right in downtown Camden. Route 52 heads to a well-marked access point on the east side of the road.
Thirty miles of trails slice through this mountainous terrain that rises from the Atlantic and provides splendid views of Penobscot Bay, Lake Megunticook and several nearby mountains.
For more information, check Camden Hills State Park, 280 Belfast Road, Camden, ME 04843; park season: 1(207)236-3109, off-season: 1(207) 236-0849; http://www.state.me.us/cgi bin/doc/parks/find_one_name.pl?park_id=14
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News and Tidbits
•World Food Shortage
Folks who live in a state such as Maine and hunt, fish, garden and gather wild foods, the latter such as berries and fiddleheads, help assuage the world food crisis by producing their own sustenance, saving more food for others.
This volunteer, food-generating behavior can never be underestimated because according to the United Nations, world hunger has finally topped the 1 billion mark and negatively affects one out of six humans across the globe — a 10.6 percent increase in the last year. (The definition of food shortage in this instance is less than 1,800 calories per day.) Hunters, anglers, gardeners and wild-food foragers should be praised for their contribution to limiting world hunger.
•Outdoors Dangers
In the U.S. each year, sharks kill one person, dogs 25 people, lightening nearly 40 and bee and wasp stings 40 to 50.
•How Hot?
When rifle shooters are lining up their rifle for the deer season and touch off a round on the range, the combustion temperature in the barrel can reach 6,000-degrees Fahrenheit.
•Spey Casting Resurgence
Thanks in part to Mainers like Mike Holt at Fly Fishing Only fly shop in downtown Fairfield, spey casting has seen a resurgence in this state. Holt hosts an annual spey-casting clinic, and part of the reason for its popularity begins with a truth. The long 2-handed rod can throw twice as much line with half the effort as a traditional rod. Spey rods also help fly rodders with bad backs.
•Not Passing Straight-Face Test
Supporters of the Endangered Species Listing for Maine’s Atlantic salmon keep saying that habitat destruction in the form of dams, acid rain, farms and other habitat degradation have hurt this state’s salmon resource, which is absolutely true. Who could argue those points?
However, in the 1970s when Maine had worse environmental destruction in the form of more dams on rivers, higher acid-rain levels and far more dairy farms, salmon runs in Maine had created an attractive recreational fishery. In fact, in those days, folks thought salmon fishing would just improve and improve.
Clearly, the rapid decline of Maine’s Atlantic salmon in the last 20 years comes from a more major cause than dams, acid rain and dairy farms. Something new destroyed the runs beyond what past habitat destruction had already done.
•Whip-Poor-Wills Once Common
During the 1950s and ’60s, whip-poor-wills in Maine were common, and at dusk, the monotonous whip-poor-will over and over was a common sound in late spring evenings. These days, except in the North Country, whip-poor-wills are uncommon in the Pine Tree State.
•Don’t Forget the Apostrophe!
The .30-’06 Springfield, a .30 caliber cartridge, originated in 1903 and underwent an upgrade in 1906 that has lasted for 103 years and counting. Because this .30 caliber came out in 1906, the cartridge designers wrote the name as .30-’06 with an apostrophe to take place of the “19” designation. Folks often leave the apostrophe off, but it belongs there as much as the “.30” or “06” or hyphen.
•Why No Hyphen?
When zoologists and ornithologists named mammals and birds, they often used a hyphen and -ed in the name — say short-tailed weasel, white-footed mouse, black-capped chickadee or golden-crowned kinglet — just to name a few examples. The exceptions to the rule often include extremely common animals that were named by laymen and not scientists.
Fish and reptiles seldom have a hyphen or -ed added to the name — say blueback trout, chain pickerel, common box turtle, northern water snake or garter snake. Folks interested in word origins and grammar wonder about such things — and probably have too much time on their hands!
•’One Pound,’ You Say!
When a black bear is born in the den during winter, it weighs but one pound — nature’s way of protecting the mother during her hibernation.
•Poplars and Ruffies
Nearly all the ruffed grouse in the world live in the Northern Hemisphere where quaking aspen and bigtooth aspen grow, illustrating this game-bird species enjoys a symbiotic relationship with these two trees.
•Boreal Forests Important
According to the National Audubon Society, 80 percent of the waterfowl species of North America breed in boreal forest regions, an incredibly important habitat for ducks, geese and of course hunters who chase these species.
•How Many Birds?
During the Christmas Bird Count, birders count around 225 bird species across New England, and participants who have areas including gulls and large flocking species such as rock doves and snow buntings easily find as many as 1,500 different birds in the single day of the counting. This number also includes typical perching species.
•Black Locust — an Out-of-Stater
Black locust grows to 50 feet and has a 20-inch trunk, a stately tree that flourishes abundantly in localized Maine places. Surprisingly, it is not indigenous to the state but extensively planted. Naturally, it shows up the most around dwellings. The close-grained, strong, durable wood can take water and soil contact fine, so it’s often a choice for fence posts or planking for boats.
•Yellow Birch Once Over-Harvested
In the 18th and 19th centuries, woodcutters over-harvested yellow birch to distill wintergreen from its twigs and branches, a use that encouraged the use of saplings. The wood of a mature yellow birch grows hard and close-grained and takes a good polish. The heartwood makes up the bulk of the trunk and has a pleasing red color, hence the colloquial name “red birch.” In the 21st century, yellow birch has made quite a comeback in Southern and Central Maine after severe over-cutting in the old days.
•Maine’s Ever So Young Rivers
Maine rivers go back about 10,000 years to the last Ice Age, which makes them babies in comparison to say the Amazon River. The Amazon originated as a transcontinental river back in the Miocene Epoch between 11.8 million and 11.3 million years ago and took its present shape about 2.4 million years ago.
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Bird of the Month
Let’s Go Rail Hunting
In the 19th century, hunting for sora rail (Porzana Carolina) proved extremely popular along the Eastern Seaboard as boat polers in the stern of square-ended skiffs pushed bow shooters around grassy marshes. One popular tactic timed the hunt for high tide when rising water pushed rails to the edge of their wetland habitat.
In stark contrast, most 21st century hunters don’t know a rail from a pomegranate. In fact, it’s such an unpopular sporting bird that every year, the season opens in early September before the federal government gives us the season dates — weird but true. People actually hunt rails by observing the previous year’s hunting dates. (This writer feels so uncomfortable with this setup that it’s no fun to hunt them until the season date is set.)
Sora rails measure 8 3/4 inches long, sport a 14-inch wingspan and weigh 2.6 ounces, making them considerably smaller than a woodcock that has the following dimensions respectively — 11-inch length, 18-inch wingspan and 6- to 8-ounce weight. (The larger of the two woodcock is always a female…the smaller a male.)
One of the key identifiers for a sora rail begins with the bill, short and yellow, where the Virginia, king and clapper rails have long, thin bills. The Virginia weighs three ounces, the clapper 10 ounces and the king 13 ounces, so with the clapper and king, we’re talking a lot of bird.
A sora rail, small, plump and gray-brown, has another identifying characteristic beside the bill, too, a black patch on the throat and face. The short, cocked tail has white to buff-colored feathers on the underneath. The immature sora has no black patch and more buff than gray-brown.
The legs of a sora show from a distance, and they look yellow with a slight primrose hint. Once someone has identified this critter, they can mount and shoot at a moment’s notice when one flushes without worrying about shooting the wrong species. The legs help in the ID.
The common rail in Maine is the sora, but when it comes to range, the world has changed in the last 40 years. A 1968 Peterson bird guidebook shows the Virginia, king and clapper rails lived well south of Maine, but the new Sibley shows them as summer visitors now.
If you believe that birds with lots of eggs have a high mortality rate, then sora rails have quite the loss. They lay six to 15 pale-yellow, buff-colored eggs with brown spots, choosing a cup nest in a clump of reeds in the open portion of a marsh. They often choose marshy ponds or freshwater marshes for breeding, but they also utilize rice fields and salt marshes.
This rail has an interesting call that birders translate as ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket. They also make a keek sound when startled, which hunters used once to good effect. They’d throw a rock into marshes and hear the panicked call.
This bird migrates the width of our continent, but when flushed in a marsh, it often gets back down before a shooter can mount and squeeze. Such a weak flight makes hunters wonder how this bird can get from Maine to Florida during migration. (Ken Allen)
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Do You Know?
How Many Hummingbird Species, You Say
Do you know how many hummingbird species we have in Maine?
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Book Corner
Not Another Knot Book!
A thought crosses this reviewer’s mind whenever a fishing-knot book crosses the office desk. Does the world need another knot book?
Well, Lindsey Philpott came up with yet another book entitled The Complete Book of Fishing Knots, Leaders, and Lines, and the publisher caught my eye, Skyhorse Publishing in New York City. This company doesn’t produce a bad product, so I gave Philpott’s book a close look.
One feature impressed me immediately — excellent color photos with the knot-tying line being a blue cord with small blue and white marks on the overall cerulean. The viewer can really see this line, which shows the turns and corners the knot tier makes in the tying process. That’s a huge plus.
The book has 50 knots. Yeah — wow! This reviewer knows 17 fishing knots and uses them. When I mention this point in seminars, participants always look impressed. Seventeen knots is a lot — 50 awesome.
Philpott provides a glossary at the end of the book, a great addition that includes words such as polymer, butt, tippet, monomer, polyvinylidenefluoride, snell, tag end and naturally more. The definition of technical words for different definitions impresses folks who have that teaching gene in them. It’s nice to know the technical explanation — if for no other reason than to satiate curiosity.
I loved the inclusion of “tag end” in the glossary because I have taught knot tying since 1974, and one part of the experience flabbergasts me. So few participants know this term. It’s tough to teach knots when the students don’t have the definition for this word.
This 202-page paperback costs $9.95, a great choice for the person who wants but one knot-tying book for his or her library. (Ken Allen)
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Innocent Bystander
Weight-Fly Objections Moot
On an outdoors bulletin board that attracts Maine malcontents, posters complain ad nauseam about weighted flies being unfair or un-something and think they should be illegal on fly-fishing-only (FFO) waters. Naturally, the posters on the grouch board all fish bait but object to weighted flies. Go figure.
Good luck with that notion about making weighted flies illegal. In the late 1990s, Maine tourism officials wanted our state consistent with the rest of the U.S. so made weighted flies legal on FFO waters. George Smith, the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, once told me that regulation would not change back anytime soon because of pressure from the ever-powerful tourism lobby.
Posters on that board often make comments about me specifically, using weighted flies on FFO waters. What a hoot! I seldom fish on FFO waters, so their complaint falls on deaf ears.
And even if I fished FFO exclusively, a line from a Neil Young song instantly pops to mind:
“It don’t mean that much to me to mean that much to you.”
In short, folks can do as they please with weighted flies, use them or not, and I shall exercise that same choice, too.
Here are three salient points about FFO waters, too:
• So many fly-fishing-only waters — usually small ponds or rivers — became that way because decades and decades ago, they lay near sporting camps with owners who had political clout. That fully explains the FFO clusters around Maine’s North Country.
• These sporting-camp owners wanted fly-fishing-only regs to insure quality sport into the future to protect their investment.
• Most importantly, many FFO waters became that way because natural features such as shallowness and abundant insect life made them perfect for surface fishing.
In short, when I fish FFO waters, it’s usually on the surface because that’s what’s happening. In still waters with general regulations, I often bottom-dredge because that’s what’s occurring there. Exceptions exist, but that’s exactly what they are — exceptions instead of rules. (Ken Allen)
Next Month: It’s All Happening Now!
When Tom Shoener worked as the director of the Information and Education Division at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, he used to say about October, “It’s all happening this month!”
Then he would explain. Upland-bird and waterfowl hunting for smoothbore enthusiasts, statewide bowhunting for deer and turkey, small-game shooting for rabbits, gray squirrels, foxes and raccoons (I know…I know…the hunting regs book calls raccoons big game, but that’s goofy.), deer hunting for the firearms crowd at the tail-end of the month, car camping, canoe tripping and backpacking in the collage of colors, hiking and photography exciting folks big time as hardwoods turn ablaze, and more, including the relatively new season for shooting turkeys with a shotgun.
Sometimes this month, a weekend passes so perfectly that it becomes a lifetime memory. A hunter might shoot a deer with a bow on Saturday, catch a nice salmon, trout or striper on Sunday morning and harvest potatoes, carrots, parsnips and other staples on Sunday afternoon, giving a new meaning to living off the land — 21st century style.
Fishing in the S-24 season from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31 is attracting more and more folks every fall, particularly in October when crowds form on name rivers that are open now. Some people like this writer have practically given up hunting in the first two to three weeks in favor of fast afternoon fishing, often over tiny blue-winged-olive hatches — big fall pigs on tiny, mosquito-sized flies and cobweb tippets.
If someone tries to fit it all in, hunting upland birds, waterfowl, gray squirrels, rabbits, raccoon, foxes, coyotes and deer and fishing salmonids, black bass, striped bass, sharks and more, he or she just cannot fit it all into the month and do them all justice. Maine surely needs a longer October.
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Answer to “Do You Know?”
How Many Hummers?
Maine has but one hummingbird species — the ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris). The male strikes the eye as a beautiful creature with a tiny, needle-like bill, metallic green above and stark white below; the male has a brilliant, iridescent, red throat, which gives the species its name. The immature male lacks the red throat, and the female looks more drab with green above, white throat and breast and buff sides.
This is the only hummingbird that breeds east of the Mississippi River. It spends its winters in the tropics.