‘Summertime and the Living Is Easy’
Most of the Time Anyway
Turkey hunting and salmonid angling have passed with a feverish display of activity back in May and into June, but by early summer, folks “think” that they settle into a slower routine and spend more time with the family. And it does work that way to a certain extent. Dads and moms grill foods over the barbecue pit, and they are developing broiling skills. Watching television cooking shows and reading the excellent cookbooks available now help folks become impressive chefs – so we cook and cook some more on the back deck on those quiet, sultry evenings or hunch over a campfire on those backpacking, canoe tripping and vehicle-camping outings.
But June offers sports and more sports such as for black bass and striped bass, and that doesn’t count trips for bluefish, mackerel, cunner, blue sharks and more salty species as well as salmonid days, when unseasonably cool rains raise rivers and draw trout and salmon upstream.
Folks who know how to troll the depths of ponds and lakes do well now, as landlocked salmon, lake trout, brook trout, brown trout and rainbow trout congregate in deep holes or over springs.
Smallmouth and largemouth bass lie 10 to 20 feet down beyond shoreline drop-offs these days, and swarm into shallows before dawn. So it’s a game of thin-water casting at dawn until the sun rises fairly up and jigging the depths for the rest of the day. Bassers in the know do as well now as they did over spawning beds last month.
Brook-trout anglers also have good sport now in brooks, after these little char leave fast water and runs for deep pools and spring holes. Folks who learn a stream have fast action with dense schools of brookies, packed up tightly for the summer. Beware of killing too many of them, though. It doesn’t take long to hurt the brookie populations in small brooks.
Chain pickerel, white perch, yellow perch, hornpout, sunfish and more attract children now – and adults looking for a fish fry that doesn’t hurt the valuable salmonid and bass resource. Those haddock-like-tasting white perch top the list for a main fish-fry ingredient, too.
Hunters begin thinking of fall hunting now, and a few go forth into more remote fields to stalk those distant brown dots. Woodchuck bellies often have plenty of insect bites and ticks now, unappetizing, but for folks with strong stomachs, a quick skinning and then putting the meat on ice leads to good eats after braising or slow-barbecuing serving pieces.
Serious hunters, particularly those after big game, scout in July, and they often use the morning coolness for woodland excursions. For diehard hunters, scouting is often a 12-month affair, but the intensity picks up in July when salmonid fishing slows a little before September.
Archers shoot a lot now to perfect a constant anchor point, crisp release and steady bow arm; shotgunners work those clay-target games to polish mount and swing; and rifle hunters perfect trigger squeeze and off-hand shooting. Practicing with the end result being cleaner kills makes sense.
Hiking with the family rules July weekends, and these outings create memories. Folks love to exercise in the cool of summer mornings by running, bicycling or walking.
In central Maine, one sport booms now – bicycling. The pedaling crowd flocks to highways with breakdown lanes, a common sight on routes such as 201, 17, 27, 2 and 3 from Belfast to Augusta to Farmington to Lewiston.
Landscape and wildlife photographers get out now and work the cool of evening and early morning, when that added bonus of golden light from an acute sun angle really makes photos pop.
Yes, July feels leisurely, but so often, we’re running around like fools, trying to squeeze it all in.
Tips of the Month
Hex Nymphs Keep a Bend in the Rod
In early July, evening Hex hatches (Hexagenia limbata) in the north country bring trophy trout and salmon to the surface to sip these 1 1/2-inch long insects, excluding the tails, quite a mouthful. Hex nymphs also work gangbusters during these emergences as salmonids chase the bugs to the surface as the large larvae ascend from bottom lairs.
All the rise rings seduce many fly rodders into casting dry flies during a Hex hatch, but a good Hex nymph on a size 6, 4x long hook with a dirty-yellow body and a dark-wing casing to match the natural takes more trout and salmon. A wiggle design on two size-10 hooks fools salmonids even better.
Veteran fly rodders with a sinking line inch the bug along, moving it quite fast beneath the surface. Don’t strip it back fast like with a streamer or bucktail, but rather, just a moderately fast nymph routine an inch at a time.
Fish Deeper for Bass Now
In July, black bass (particularly females) lurk at 10- to 20-foot depths beyond drop-offs close to where they spawned in June. As the month slides toward August, bass drop even deeper. Bass anglers who know how to work bait-casting or spinning rods with a deep jig deep catch fish – and lots of them – in the summer doldrums.
And, as a bass guide always says to me, “When bass fishing, think bass – not trout.” In short, hot is good.
Pig-simple Grilled Mackerel
That’s Fit for Royalty
Gather the following ingredients:
2 mackerel per person
1 stick of melted butter
2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard
1/2 to 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of white pepper
Mix the butter, Dijon mustard, fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper and let stand on the edge of the grill in a warm (but no hot) place for 15 to 30 minutes.
As the coals near readiness, split the mackerel down the back. When the coals look medium-dark red, grease the grill lightly, put the rack five inches above coals and lay on the fish – skin side up. Cook four to seven minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish.
Flip over and add the mustard-butter sauce and continue cooking four to seven more minutes. The minutes-method is a rough guideline, but near the end, you should pay more attention to the following advice: Once the meat flakes and looks opaque and moist, it’s done. Don’t cook to a dryness. Fresh mackerel broiled like this taste better than any seafood around – and it’s simple, free and easy. As Alton Brown would say, “Good eats.”
Where the Action Is
Stripers, Blues and Mackerel Beckon
In This Golden Saltwater Triangle
Maps 6 and 7 of DeLorme’s The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer (MAG) show the Bath-to-Damariscotta-to-South Bristol triangle that includes six large, coastal rivers, where anglers after stripers, blues and mackerel can spend an entire summer from daylight to dark and not hit all these waters offer – including all-around excellent lodging choices and magnificent restaurants.
Please peruse the Kennebec River (Map 6, A-5, B-5, C-5, D-5 and E-6), Sasanoa River (Map 6, C-5), Back River (Map 6, C-5 and Map 7, C-1), Sheepscot River (Map 7, B-2, C-1 and D-1), Cross River, (Map 7, C-2) and Damariscotta River (Map 7, A-3, B-3, C-3 and D-3). The last river calls for a short, sheltered cruise across the ocean – never getting far from land.
These rivers create a complex highway, where unknowing anglers can get absolutely lost, even though houses are everywhere. More than one angler on this network of rivers has stopped on shore and asked direction. (I was once entirely baffled on the Cross River after starting before dawn on the Kennebec River in Bath.)
In this unbelievably striking setting with calendar-photo scenes everywhere, fly casters, hardware flingers and bait dunkers can catch striped bass, bluefish and mackerel, and early July means cow and bull stripers to titillate the soul.
Maine Backpacking for Stream Brookies
Backpacking for Maine brook trout has an appeal difficult to deny – catching these colorful char in a remote setting and maybe eating a brace for lunch right at streamside.
Spencer Stream offers backpackers a great spot to find adventure, where it flows from Spencer Lake to the Dead River. Anglers in the know like to fish upstream 2 1/2 miles from the confluence with the Dead – easy to like. Beautiful pocket waters, pools and runs shout brookies at every turn.
Please peruse MAG, Map 29. A-5. Landlocked salmon also inhabit this brookie water, and at times, they’re over 20 inches, a magnificent fight on a 4-weight fly rod. With a little rain, this fly-fishing-only stream comes alive in July, and it’s as picturesque as a fly-fishing calendar.
News and Tidbits
Brown Creeper Nests
Have you ever seen a brown-creeper nest? These furtive, inconspicuous birds build the cup-like structure on a tree trunk behind a loose slab of bark, and the construction takes a month to finish, using leaves, bark shreds, feathers, sticks and moss. Then, the female lays five to six
white eggs with brown specks. Unlike a nuthatch, creepers only move up a trunk to forage and never down it, one key to identification from a distance.
Ruffed Grouse Broods
Ruffed grouse in Maine may nest and hatch in later May or early June, depending on latitude and elevation. They lay about a dozen pinkish to light-tannish eggs with no spots or with dull-brown ones. These birds can leave the nest within hours and fly within 10 to 12 days, often taking them into June.
Heavy June rains kill chicks and hurt hunting later in the fall. First- year birds constitute a majority of the kill in years with lots of young ones surviving spring and summer. In years of big June die-offs, October grouse hunters running into one another at stores often ask, “Have you gotten your grouse yet?”
Chestnut-sided Warblers: Pleased to Meet Cha’
Birds in Maine breed, nest and rear young later than in southern New England, and one warbler has just finished its annual ritual. A chestnut-sided warbler has a long, chestnut-colored stripe down its side as it sings, “Pleased, pleased, pleased to meet cha’,” a common call in late spring and into summer.
Bald-faced Hornets
Bald-face hornets build nests from a paper-like, gray material that they make from chewed bits of wood, and they hang the pendant-like structure from the bottom of a deciduous limb.
When these nests appear on the edge of a lawn in late summer, where we might be looking all spring without seeing it, we often think that it appeared overnight.
In truth, though, the nest-building begins in May, but the early structure looks like a tiny mushroom dangling from the limb, easy to miss because it’s scant inches tall. By June, it’s the size of a golf ball, but by the ninth month, it has grown to basketball dimensions and has three combs inside.
Bears and Birdfeeders
Stories of bears invading backyard birdfeeders become more common every year as these big omnivores chow down bird seeds in great quantities, a problem unheard of in this writer’s youth. It might have happened on occasion, but it seldom made the news. These days, state officials occasionally tell people to avoid feeding birds for fear of drawing bears into suburbs close to people.
Some People Cannot Stand
To See Others Having Fun
A now-retired fisheries biologist from the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife once told this writer, “Some people cannot stand to see others having fun!”
He once told me that he’d appreciate it if I did not use his name in this story, because through the decades, it had caused him problems with angry people who saw his name with the comment.
Birdfeeding reminds me of this man, because many of us feed birds and have great fun doing it. (Please look at the “Bears and Birdfeeding” entry just above this one.) However, state officials, environmentalists and general naysayers often berate folks into this gentle hobby, because we’re changing bird behavior (say drawing new species to Maine), bringing bears into suburbs and exurbs, and perhaps even attracting curious Martians.
When people decide to complain about an act that causes no direct problems to anyone, they ought to remember the biologist who said, “Some people can’t stand seeing others having fun.”
Would these folks’ complaints fit into that category?
Salty Snappers
Snapping turtles live everywhere across New England except in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and extreme northern reaches of Maine and New Hampshire. This turtle lives in fresh, brackish, and (are you ready for this claim?) even in salt water. Muddy-bottomed ponds are especially attractive. They forage most frequently at night.
Bats vs. Whales
What do bats have in common with whales and dolphins?
They are both mammals that navigate by echo-location, and the sound pulse that a bat emits comes back to its ear in 0.006 of a second.
Snakes from Eggs or Live Young
Northern water snakes, red-bellied snakes, common garter snakes, eastern ribbon snakes, copperheads and timber rattlers are New England snakes that give birth to live young. Ring-necked snakes, North American racers, smooth greensnakes, eastern ratsnakes and milksnakes lay eggs to produce young.
Moose Lottery Scholarships
The University of Maine 4-H Camp & Learning Center at Bryant Pond is one of two programs to receive $60,000 from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s (DIF&W’s) annual Moose Hunting Permit Auction for its youth- conservation-education, summer-camp programming.
Each year, DIF&W auctions 10 moose-hunting permits to the highest bidders, who bid through a written process. Winning bids for 2013 ranged from $10,191.11 to $11,734.56. All funds from the sale of these permits, including bidding fees, go into a nonlapsing fund to be used to pay the costs to administer the program and to fund youth conservation education programs in Maine.
The Bryant Pond 4-H Camp awards these funds as $250 scholarships toward the cost of many of its summer camp programs. These scholarships are for Maine residents only, are all one-time use and issued on a first-come, first-served basis. The Bryant Pond program has been a recipient of these funds since the moose permit legislation was enacted in 1995. As a result, hundreds of Maine young people have used the scholarship funds to attend a summer session of “Conservation Camp,” earning their boating or hunter safety certification.
More information about University of Maine 4-H Camp & Learning Center’s programs is online (www.umaine.edu/bryantpond/summer-camp ). For summer camp scholarship information, contact Bryant Pond 4-H Camp at (207) 665-2068.
Mammoth Mako on Rod and Reel
Fishers on a boat out of Huntington Beach recently caught a potentially world record-breaking mako shark with a rod and reel. The massive shark weighed 1,323.5 pounds and 2 1/2-hours to reel in. As an angler from Mesquite, Texas fought the fish, it jumped out of the water five times, going 20 to 25 feet into the air.
“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life,” said a grinning Jason Johnston, who reeled in the shark. “This thing was a beast.”
The shark measured 144 inches.
“It’s unreal,” Johnston said. “This thing is definitely a killing machine. … Any wrong step I could have went [sic]out of the boat and gone to the bottom of the ocean.”
Videographers reportedly caught the shark on tape, while filming for a reality television show about hunting.
Mammoth Mako on Rod and Reel
Fishers on a boat out of Huntington Beach recently caught a potentially world record-breaking mako shark with a rod and reel. The massive shark weighed 1,323.5 pounds and 2 1/2-hours to reel in. As an angler from Mesquite, Texas fought the fish, it jumped out of the water five times, going 20 to 25 feet into the air.
“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life,” said a grinning Jason Johnston, who reeled in the shark. “This thing was a beast.”
The shark measured 144 inches.
“It’s unreal,” Johnston said. “This thing is definitely a killing machine. … Any wrong step I could have went [sic]out of the boat and gone to the bottom of the ocean.”
Videographers reportedly caught the shark on tape, while filming for a reality television show about hunting.
Bird of the Month
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker’s a Ghost
Eleven years ago, a fisheries-biologist visitor, an avid birdwatcher, sat at my dining-room table, eating a bag lunch and looking out a picture window behind me, when he hollered, “Look…a yellow-bellied sapsucker!”
And why not the excitement? Sibley calls yellow-bellied sapsuckers “uncommon,” and the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Birds refers to the species as “least conspicuous,” “quietest of the woodpeckers” and “mainly silent,” particularly difficult to spot, because this bird moves to the opposite side of a trunk when a human approaches.
A tree-lined hedge between my lawn and a neighbor’s has birch, chokecherry and black-cherry trunks with those even rows of small holes, showing me where this sapsucker has fed on sap and insects gathering around the shallow drillings. However, that was the first time I had noticed a sapsucker at this home – but I had only lived there for about a month.
Since then, this species has caught my eye multiple times, more than all the previous sightings in my life before living there. They’re much easier to spot from the confines of a house, because the birdwatcher is peering out a window with binoculars rather than walking toward one in the wide-open spaces, where the bird can easily see the intruder.
This bird measures 8 ½ inches long, sports a 16-inch wingspan and weighs nearly two ounces – 1.8-ounces to be exact. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers have a red crown, a long, white mustache and a distinctive white bar on the top of the wings. The male has a red patch on the throat and messy white bars on the back as opposed to more even, tannish ones on the female.
The “yellow” for the belly in the name reminds me of the “tannish-yellow” of a wood-duck flank feather. Folks unacquainted with British words for color would be confused, but fly tiers know the lingo.
This bird feeds in an interesting manner. It drills even holes into the bark’s cambium layer, which starts sap running out. They use the brush-like tongue to sop up the liquid. Later, they return myriad times for more sap and for also to collect insects gathering on the hole to feed on the nectar.
The holes allow fungus and other diseases to attack the tree, nature’s way of opening up forests if the tree dies and falls. Yes, the natural world produces storms, pests and so forth to prune and remove trees for the betterment of the forest and wildlife.
Peterson said yellow-bellied sapsuckers make a “mewing note or squeal” and a “cheerrrr” slurring downward. That interpretation suits this writer, but it takes a little luck to hear this bird often enough to make a judgment. They are furtive, all right. The female lays five to six white eggs in a trunk cavity, suggesting moderately high mortality, but not really high like a ruffed grouse that routinely produces 12 to 13 eggs. (Ken Allen)
Do You Know?
Where Are Those Sapsuckers Anyway?
When birdwatchers, particularly novices, look up yellow-bellied sapsuckers in a guidebook, they may have trouble finding the species in the index. Do you know which entry to look under – woodpecker, sapsucker or flicker?
Book Corner
Art of Katahdin Offers Great Visuals,
And it’s Highly but Painlessly Educational, Too
Art of Katahdin by David Little and edited by Carl Little (Down East Books, Maine) gives readers and viewers great visuals – approximately 200 artworks by well-known artists over 15 decades. The book provides readers with entertaining, educational writing and historical glimpses of Mount Katahdin and surrounding lands from over 150 years, quite an attraction for lovers of art and the north-woods scene.
The list of artists includes Frederic Edwin Church, Edmund Marsden Hartley, Maurice Day, George H. Hallowell, James Fitzgerald, Nancy Hubbell, William Leino, Janice Anthony, Christopher Huntington, Clyde Aspevig, Thomas Connely, David Little, Ronald Parlin, Ellen Church and Robert F. Bukaty.
My listing of a few artists from a multitude can get me in trouble in a hurry, so here’s a quick explanation for my choices: Artists on the list have paintings in the book that would be in my art collection – if I could swing it financially – a pig-simple yet complex decision for including them.
The prose through the book includes plenty of descriptions and solid info on the artists and the land they painted or drew, and even an expert on the region will find pertinent, unknown tidbits. That’s a promise from me.
Hartley caught my eye in the 1970s when photography had captured me heart and soul, and his oils have intrigued me ever since. He painted backlit scenes that worked, really impressing me. (Check out page 119 of the book.) Back in the 1970s, backlit photography was in the realm of a few in the professional ranks – in short, mostly avoided. Hartley tackled “backlit subjects” head on.
Springtime on page 168 caught my eye and generated a “wow” from me, and much to my surprise, I did a double-take at the artist’s credit – David Little – the author. He earned an instant fan with his artwork of a woodland cabin in snow, that oh-so-typical deep snow in a northern Maine springtime.
Ronald Parlin’s underwater moose in Unpestered Moose (page 175) struck me as the most intriguing artwork in the book – just a view I had never seen of a Maine moose. Parlin’s works are familiar to many Maine outdoors types.
My credentials for reviewing an art book are adequate. I’ve spent seemingly endless but exciting hours in museums such as the Prado in Madrid, Louvre in Paris, Jeu de Paume in Paris (in the old days when it displayed French impressionists), Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art and so forth – with stops in multiple Maine galleries and museums. I’ve also helped David Footer judge the annual art show of outdoor subjects at the State of Maine Sportsman’s Show.
This book costs $50, reasonable for the numerous high-quality artwork photos, so it is worth the price for folks who love art, Katahdin country and Maine. This book belongs in many of our readers’ libraries, and as we like to say here, “It’s a keeper.” (Ken Allen)
Innocent Bystander
The Maine Sportsman Articles
Offer Plenty of Where-to-go
In 1984, an angry reader telephoned to complain about one of my articles that mentioned a huge trout pond in a mountainous area of the North County. His beginning monolog reached the vitriolic message in a hurry, too. He owned a summer place on the pond, fished it all the time and claimed angling quality had deteriorated significantly, so writers should stop sending anglers there to ruin it more.
“Let me get this straight,” I said, “You claim the fishing has declined ‘significantly’; yet, you fish the pond ‘all the time’? If it’s bad, why fish it? If it needs a rest, shouldn’t we all be doing it?”
Furthermore, that spring before the phone call, another couple, as well as my ex-wife and I, had fished the pond often and did exceptionally well with salmon up to three pounds and brookies routinely measuring 16 inches. In short, we had done okay, depending on daily conditions.
The man’s attitude got worse, too. The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife stocked the pond with salmon back then and that program continues until this day – salmon paid for with public revenues from license fees, excise taxes on sporting equipment and so forth – a user-fee so to speak – and this misologist didn’t want the public to fish “his” pond. This is a continuing theme for outdoor writers.
Where-to-go ranks as the proverbial bread-and-butter topic of this publication, because readers want to know what waters are producing action, readers including me. The Maine Sportsman writers often mention a water or hunting spot that makes me think, “I’ve gotta’ try that place.” And I do.
After years of reader phone calls, letters and e-mails, I can solidly attest to the fact that most of them look at where-to-go pretty much as I do. Where-to offers a grand reader service, and our audience loves the info – as long as it isn’t a favorite water of that reader. Then, they often complain to the earth, water and stars about us sharing their honey hole with others.
…One, last quick point: We have an editorial policy against where-to fish or hunt in small brooks or mini-ponds with wild salmonids or a bird cover – say at the corner of two roads. We don’t want to send crowds to a fragile resource, but we do tell folks about stocked waters, larger water with wild or stocked fish and larger areas like a township, mountain or highway to hunt.
And for 40 years, readers have liked that service and hated it at the same time. (Ken Allen)
Next Month
Humid Afternoons But Cool Mornings
Back in May, outdoors types complained about stiff afternoon winds that blew practically daily, but this month, a good wind helps us tolerate high 80- to 90-degree-plus noon temperatures with intolerable humidity, so we pray for what we couldn’t stand in May. And why not? August weather wears us down with air that envelopes us like water rather than air, causing sweat to flow.
Early risers use the morning cool for exercising, working dogs, gardening, lawn-mowing or any heavy-duty work, but sleep-in-late types are always sweating out chores in high temperatures and heavy air, inevitable later in the day.
August means ocean fishing for so many of us, because while we chase stripers, blues, mackerel, groundfish, blue sharks and the like, those salty breezes cool us and occasionally send us digging for a jacket in the bottom of the duffle bag.
Hunters practice shooting bows and arrows, shotguns and rifles now, perfecting skills for making clean shots later in hunting seasons that begin with bears in late August, upland birds and waterfowl in October and deer from September to December with this last sport peaking from late October to the Saturday after Thanksgiving Day.
Road walking, woods hiking, running and bicycling attract folks now, particularly folks wanting to be in better condition for fall sports. The wise ones get out in early morning, but some people don’t mind sweating, because they feel as if the workout is more beneficial.
Hot weather means drinking more fluids, though, and one consequence of not following the regimen is death – quite an incentive. On a blistering day, it’s nothing for someone exercising heavily to consume 20 ounces of fluid per hour. Swiss researchers funded by the pro-bicycling industry showed that people who drink vitamin waters with electrolytes performed better than those drinking plain water. Other researchers have shown that cold beverages work better than warm to keep our core temperatures down.
Answer to “Do You Know?”
Yup, I Once Had a Problem with Sapsuckers
During my teens, I was trying to look up “yellow-bellied sapsucker” in a birding guidebook and remember the day as if it had occurred yesterday.
First, I looked under “woodpecker” and then “flicker,” because this species is actually a woodpecker and resembles a northern flicker (then called “yellow-shafted flicker”). I didn’t find the species, so out of desperation, I thought, “It can’t be under ‘sapsucker’,” but it was right there – and remains “sapsucker” in guidebooks.
Thinking “woodpecker” makes sense because this bird quietly pecks holes in trees and eventually eats bugs after the sap holes attract them, but the answer is sapsucker.
