June 2010 Almanac
Maine’s As Green As It Ever Gets
This month, Maine’s as green as it ever gets, rivaling Ireland. Hayfields with short, verdant grass ripple in the wind, and foliage looks lush to the extreme, the kind of green that oil painters need lots of yellow to duplicate. Yellow brightens the green considerably where blue changes it to a drabber green. Talk about a viridescent explosion. It occurs early in our sixth month.
By July, though, hay turns from emerald green to golden yellow and leaves begin fading, but in mid-summer, it takes an astute eye to notice the changing foliage – but change does occur. Forget July, though, because June has arrived and it just may be Maine’s best month for sport and idyllic weather – if rains take a holiday.
Stripers and mackerel arrive this month. Those two will be here, almost a certainty, and with luck, bluefish show up this month, too. Saltwater fishing hits a peak now because mackerel swarm and cow and bull stripers offer folks a chance to wrestle with a leviathan. Bluefish just sweeten a pot heavy already.
Brook-trout ponds, streams and brooks boom in Northern Maine as long days create high temperatures that plummet in the evening. Afternoon fishing is the norm in June in high elevations in the North Country.
Black bass move onto spawning beds, and folks take advantage. This month ranks as a top-action time for Maine bass. Other warm-water species such as white perch, black crappies, pike, pickerel, yellow perch and sunfish also feed heavily now.
In the bottom third of Maine, brown trout hang around shallow lake coves at the break of dawn, and folks out of bed and onto the water can have a time of it. Salmon also move into shallows in the cool morning and offer sport.
Black flies and mosquitoes swarm now, awful in the woods, but hardcore deer scouters slather on repellant and go forth to pattern deer movement.
Folks with bow and arrows stump-shoot now, excellent practice for shooting at unknown distances that require precise estimates to score a good shot. Also, stump-shooters can sneak through the woods, polishing still-hunting skills.
Landscape photographers have endless greens and colorful wild flowers now – just an easy time to pop eyes open. Photographers cannot miss when nature cooperates so fully as it does in June.
According to a sales clerk at L.L.Bean, backpacking is increasing in popularity these days, and why not? We’ve never had better backpacking gear – durable and light, very light. And Maine trails number as high as the imagination can go.
Tips of the Month
Flip ‘’Em and Flip ‘Em Again and Again
Nothing in the culinary world tastes better than chicken cooked golden-brown over hardwood coals such as beech, rock maple or red oak. When the finished product has no charred-black skin, just that perfect brownness, folks smile and exclaim loudly about how delicious it looks before digging in. Such an appreciated achievement results from proper heat and lots and lots of work best described by flip-’em-and-flip-’em-again-and-again.
First, make sure the grill stays high enough above the coals so the chef can hold his or her hand at that distance for six seconds, meaning a fairly “high” low heat, that paradoxical quality that keeps the chicken from scorching on the outside.
Second, turning the pieces of chicken every two or three minutes helps keep the skin from burning to a charred black, resulting in golden-brown chicken with a moist center – the essence of fowl cookery.
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Bow Arm Dropping Ruins Accuracy
Anyone who spends time at an archery range can see many shooters execute a great release, thanks to the growing popularity of mechanical-release tools that help develop a crisp, perfect release and a consistent anchor point.
However, a common fault that impairs accuracy is dropping the bow arm on the shot. A right-hander often lets the left bow arm fall downward and to the left, sending the arrow in the same direction. A rock-steady bow arm during and after the shot leads to deadly accuracy.
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Campers Let Hygiene Go Out Window
Many campers let hygiene go out the window whenever they wash dishes, which can easily result in a case of the backdoor trots running through a camping party.
A dunk bag ends this problem. After washing dishes in hot soapy water (or even cold), rinse the soap off with hot (or cold) water and then, sterilize the dishes and utensils by placing them in a dunk bag and immersing them in boiling water for a few minutes.
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Where the Action Is
Go North, Folks, Go North into Mountains
June heat can turn Southern and Central Maine into an oven, so to beat the high temperatures, folks in the know head north to mountainous elevations such as the Rangeley Lakes Region. Thermometers drop to chilly levels in the evening, making summer seem like a distant hope.
Honey holes such as the Rapid, Kennebago and Cupsuptic rivers attract mobs, but South Bog Stream on the south side of Rangeley Lake off South Shore Road can offer solitude, particularly when fly rodders trudge through thickets north from the road. As fly fishers get close to Rangeley Lake, the stream gets deeper with delightful gravel glides. And the good news is this: South Bog Stream has a fly-fishing-only regulation.
On one day, South Bog Stream can be empty of brookies, but the next one can produce blistering action as these char rush upstream from Rangeley Lake, some of them big and sassy from their life in still water. The sport here is reminiscent of woodcock hunting where one day can be a bust and the next paradise in the exact same places.
South Bog by the road offers lots of pocket water and plenty of current spilling downhill, which attracts 6- to 10-inch brook trout, typical pan trout. In the stream near the lake, though, surprisingly big brook trout can offer superb action, and a 2- or 3-pounder, and bigger, surprises no one. In June and particularly late September, gravel glides near the lake hold a few wall hangers.
South Bog Stream in mid-June offers folks a great place to introduce a kid to wild brook trout in a remote-looking setting that looks like an old-time calendar photo.
Check DeLorme’s The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer (MAG), Map 18, A-4 and 28, E-4 for details.
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Kennebec in Waterville For Rough-Fish Smorgasbord
The Kennebec River in Waterville (MAG, Map 21, E-2) flows through a developed area, but hardwood trees cover the shoreline. Once known for brown trout, it has lately earned a reputation for producing striped bass, smallmouth bass and American shad. Newbies to this stretch of the Kennebec can observe other anglers and see where and how to fish here. Yes, make no mistake, this spot draws crowds.
Anglers interested in shad need shad darts on fly or spinning rods, and those after stripers need Lefty’s Deceivers on fly rods or herring stick baits on spinning and bait-casting rods. Nearby sport shops often sell what lures or flies are working shad or stripers.
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News & Tidbits
The Most Gaudy Bird Mimics Nature
Back in 1907, Richard S. Meryman painted Peacock in the Woods, showing the male with extended tail feathers at rest and splashed with dappled sunlight. Instead of looking gaudy, though, the individual peacock eyes created a perfect camouflage for a woodland setting.
Granted, a peacock does look gaudy on grass or dirt with no mottled light, but Meryman’s picture showed what Mother Nature really had in mind when designing this bird that chooses woodlands in the wild.
In the same token, pink flamingoes have a shockingly pink color, but at sunrise or sunset, they blend with the colors of a setting sun, reflecting from water. Wood ducks sitting on a noon pond in full sunlight also blend with the setting.
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How Tall’s the Conifer?
White pine typically grow to 100 feet tall, white spruce to 75 feet, black spruce to 75 feet, red spruce to 80 feet, balsam fir to 60 feet, eastern hemlock to 70 feet, red pine to 80 feet, tamarack (larch) to 80 feet and northern white cedar to 75 feet.
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How Tall’s the Hardwood?
Black willow, sugar maple, American elm, American basswood and white oak typically reach 100 feet in height; red maple and red oak 90 feet; white ash, balsam poplar, American beech, black cherry and burr oak 80 feet; paper birch, trembling aspen and butternut 70 feet; bigtooth aspen 60 feet; black ash 50 feet; hawthorn 40 feet; striped maple, gray birch, American hornbeam, mountain ash and witch hazel 30 feet; mountain maple 25 feet; speckled alder and chokecherry 20 feet.
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No Summer That Year
In 1816, Maine and the rest of the Northeast had serious cold weather all summer, thanks to ash spewing from an Indonesian volcano the previous year. A big snowstorm hit in June, and in fact, it snowed in all 12 months, thanks to the volcanic-induced veil covering the sun. A frost hurt crops in July and August as well as other months. Will the volcanic activity in Iceland this past spring affect us as the volcano did in the early 1800s?
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Where’s Central Maine?
The exact central part of Maine lies in Brownville Junction in Piscataquis County 18 miles north of Dover-Foxcroft. The longitude is 69 degrees 14.0’W and latitude 45 degrees 15.2’W.
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Urban vs. Rural
Maine has nearly 549,000 residents living in rural areas and 769,000 in urban areas. This predominance of urbanites can affect Maine elections when a question favors city folks over country denizens.
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Maine Farm Statistics
Maine has 7,196 farms covering 1,367,000 acres, which figures out to an average size of 190 acres each. We have 5,637 farm operators who are men and 1,559 women. Game animals such as deer might be bad for farms, but farms are good for deer and turkeys – a built-in feeding area for these critters.
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Commercial Fishing Worth Plenty…Or Is It?
In 2007, the commercial fishing landings in Maine valued $363,115,964, and of that figure, 77 percent came from lobsters and only 3 percent from groundfish and 2 percent from Atlantic herring. Compare that to inland fishing that generates about $500 million each year.
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A Songbird Species with Great Memory
The Clark’s nutcracker lives in mountainous habitat in the Northwest of the United States where this species eats primarily seeds. In warmer months, this nutcracker stores pine seeds in caches, and then, during winter, it may remember about 80 percent of its food-hiding places and eat as many as 30,000 pine seeds in as many as 2,500 caches – a tidbit from Bernd Heinrich’s Winter World.
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Fly-Line Color Makes Little Difference
On a bright, sunlit day, a fly rodder experimented with four different colored fly lines – light blue, bright yellow, medium green and white. He spread the lines across a swimming pool and then swam beneath the water, looking up toward the blue sky and sun behind the four lines. The lines looked darkish black. If the observer moved to the right or left of the line, the color might be distinguished, but it required the right angle. Does fly-line color make a difference to fish looking up toward one floating on the surface? …Probably not.
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Amazing Ignorance about Stocked Brookies
The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIF&W) has stocked brook trout with excellent longevity for years, but the average angler still believes stocked brookies do not live a year.
Research on Little Pond in Damariscotta showed that Maine’s brook trout placed in waters with strict regulations to lower the kill can survive at least six years! DIF&W fisheries biologists documented fish with fin clips to be that old.
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Bird of the Month
Sing-song Call Adds Merriment to Life
The black-throated green warbler’s (Dendroica virens) lisping, sing-song zoo-zee-zoo-zoo-zee or zee-zee-zee-zee-zoo-zee call or a variation of that sound sequence adds such merriment to a woodland wanderer’s life each spring, a common canorous melody in mixed-growth forests where stands of hemlock and oak grow.
Black-throats hang around treetops, so birdwatchers often hear them without catching a glimpse. However, this call catches the ear of even the most casual observer, particularly fly rodders along trout streams flowing past oak and hemlock stands.
Folks who take the time to spot this warbler feel richly rewarded. Both genders have bright-yellow faces with soft, green backs and crowns and coal-black throats – strikingly beautiful creatures that look monomorphic. (Monomorphic strictly this writer’s unofficial opinion….) As with most songbirds, photos or paintings do the black-throated green warbler little justice.
Because the most distinguishing color is yellow, particularly when viewed from a distance, it makes a contemplative birdwatcher wonder why the name emphasizes black and green and not yellow.
The answer comes quickly to an inquiring mind, though. So many warblers have yellow faces, so what distinguishes the black-throated green warbler. Well, the black throat and green back and crown do, hence the name.
This species measures five inches in length, has a 7 3/4-inch wingspan and weighs just a tad shy of one-third ounce – a rather typically sized warbler.
My first sighting of the black-throat came in a rather characteristic manner. I say “characteristic” because since then, the bird has caught my eye in the exact manner several times.
In May, I may be fly-fishing in a river or stream that flows through mixed-growth forest with lots of huge oaks and hemlocks. In this setting, a day doesn’t pass that month when I do not hear several black-throats without seeing them.
However, in places where hemlocks or oaks grow near narrow floodplains next to steep ridges, I may be walking on top of the ridge and see a solitary black-throated green back as it flits around treetops at eyelevel – the perfect setup for seeing this species. Not to sound like a sissy, but it strikes most observers as a darling little creature.
This species builds a nest on a conifer branch, using grass, moss and plant fibers for the base of the cup and then lining it with hair and feathers. This species lays four to five white eggs that have brown spots. (Ken Allen)
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Do You Know?
It’s a Very Large Critter
A warm-blooded species in Maine does not drink water or urinate all winter long. Do you know which animal accomplishes this amazing feat?
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Book Corner
Well-Researched, Informative, Just Superb…A Must Buy!
Eric Jay Dolin’s Fur, Fortune, and Empire with the subtitle The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America (W.W. Norton Publishing) will hit bookstores in July 2010, but a copy arrived here at the office in early April, wowing this reviewer.
The excellence of the writing and high-quality research will impress discriminating readers, and surely, for folks who review outdoor titles, Dolin’s work emphasized how the quality of outdoor writing in America varies from absolutely astonishing to pig-swill awful.
As outdoor titles go, the research in Fur, Fortune, and Empire will strike the reader as very thorough and the timeline covers the North American continent from the first Old World Settlers in the 17th century, wars with the French and then the British in the 18th and early 19th century, the westward expansion in the 19th century and then the epilogue, entitled “The End of an Era,” a short, bittersweet chapter.
Starting on page 68, Dolin has included a wonderful anecdote that occurred in what is now Maine and sounds like a Hollywood movie. The incident and backlash take place on the Kennebec River in 1634, which once again shows this state has stories that resonate with excitement just as any other region in the country – including the wild and wooly West – where cultures clashed.
This reviewer’s favorite part was the mountain men of the West. As a child, I read every book about this era that I could find in libraries, and in those years, novels galore covered the period, creating a lifelong interest.
As a kid, though, I lamented being born 150 years too late, causing me to miss the party when folks made a living trapping while sleeping under the stars.
Dolin has earned a reputation as a superb writer who won the best book of the year award for his Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. He’s obviously no stranger to researching history, which he no doubt perfected as a graduate student at Yale and a doctoral student at MIT. Need I say more about credentials?
And speaking of research, 93 pages of notes at the end of Fur, Fortune, and Empire offer information and more information on – well…notes of interest throughout the text. Conscientious readers will check these as they read and then go back over the notes later – an avalanche of great, picky trivia to spring on friends with the same interest in history.
I recommend this book with enthusiasm – a 422-page work. (Ken Allen)
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Next Month
July Means Full-Blown Summer
July means full-blown summer in Maine, our hottest month. Those verdant fields of June turn golden and ultra-lush leaves start fading under the glaring sun. It’s ever so easy to feel lazy on a blistering Saturday afternoon, or any afternoon. As the song says, “Summertime and the living is easy….”
However, for the outdoors sporting crowd, life roars along – evening hatches continuing on northern brook-trout ponds, lake trout congregating in deep holes, black bass moving into 10- to 20-foot depths, migrating stripers, blues and mackerel invading coastal waters and shooting sports such as 3-D bow-and-arrow target practice, riflemen perfecting trigger squeeze and clay sports helping folks mount and swing. These all keep us busy.
Until the late 1960s, Maine’s fishing basically ended after the July 4th holiday. These days, though, fly rodders with an interest in fishing such storied hatches as Hexagenia limbata, Isonychia bicolor and myriad tiny mayflies colloquially dubbed blue-winged olives (BWOs) changed that scene, practically overnight. It’s no exaggeration to say some folks live for summer’s Hexes, white-gloved howdies and BWOs.
By month’s end, bear baiters can start 30 days prior to the season opener, and deer hunters scout hard, hoping to pattern a trophy buck.
Woodchuck hunters get out now before hay grows too high or they hit fields that farmers have mowed. Either way, it leaves those distant brown dots vulnerable to flat-shooting rifles or to skilled stalkers. Don’t stuff the woodchuck carcasses down the holes, though. Try eating them, but first, get directions on how to move the offensive glands.
Speaking of eating…. Outdoor cooking interests folks who have turned into gourmet chefs on the back patio. They perfect recipes and become legends – in their own circle anyway where it really counts. Leisurely summer evenings lend themselves to cooking.
After kids get out of school and life settles into a routine that involves family fun, canoe tripping, backpacking and vehicle camping take off. These endeavors build lifetime memories for children – as does family fishing.
Bicycling gets bigger every year in Maine. The day before writing this section of the “Almanac,” I was bicycling on Central Maine back roads for three hours and counted 17 bicyclists – 17! I didn’t even go near a big bicycling highway with breakdown lanes, either, but rather, narrow, hilly country roads. One peleton involved two adults and four children.
Bicycling, jogging and walking have really picked up as folks try to exercise and make their lives more healthful as they head into old age.
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Answers to “Do You Know?”
The Answer Is So Simple That It’s Difficult
Readers who cannot get this answer without looking here will exclaim, “Oh, yes!”
While black bear den in the winter, they do not drink or urinate. How they do this feat and appear not to lose bone mass during months of inactivity puzzles researchers.