fishing

Saturday was the Union Spring Hooked on Fishing Event the turnout was nothing short of amazing with well over 200 at Ayer Park. Baiting hooks, casting lines, eating hot dogs and oh yes even catching a few fish. You can see articles and pictures about the event in the Courier Gazette and Village Soup. Both papers have excellent photos of the day, none of me though.

My season has been off to a great start. One of the best things about guiding is the great folks that I get to spend time with over the years. Often a trip is as much a chance to catch up with a friend as anything. I am truly fortunate for the great folks that I have as clients. Now to the fishing.

One of the great parts of being a guide is having to actually spend time finding the fish or birds or making sure that water levels are right. There is nothing better than having to spend the afternoon launching the boat and poking around to see if I can find a few fish on an afternoon like this. The breeze was light when I started and went to nothing as the afternoon progressed. As you can see in this picture the water was just like glass and I can verify that the air temperature was nearly perfect.

Like the leaves turning color and falling marks the change of seasons at the end of summer. Their arrival marks the beginning of the summer as well. Gradually the hillsides turn a pale red with the maple buds and then the poplar leaves arrive as a bright green splash. Followed by the beech trees adding their leaves. The young beeches are most noticeable near the house because they limit the distance that you can see into the woods. They seem to arrive in only a day or two and before you know it the woods are green. The woodland wildflowers have been marking the season as well.

My days have been spent working to get all of the boats ready for the coming season; everything from electrical problems to fiberglass repairs. All are simple enough but take considerable time and when working with fiberglass patience. The Lund Alaskan is set to go and I am confident in it after a sea trial in the lower Saint George yesterday. Everything worked as it should and I am sure that it will provide an excellent fishing platform for the coming seasons. This morning I am applying a new coating of fiberglass cloth to the stern of the Grand Lake Canoe.

This morning Argy and I got up early and drove to Bar Harbor to have breakfast with our son and his girlfriend before heading back to Ellsworth to pick up my new Lund at Branch Pond Marine. We got the paperwork filled out and wrote the big check before getting the walk through on how to make everything work. After going over all of the details we drove back to Union. After a short break at my desk I began fitting the boat out with the required safety equipment and handy items that I like to have on board.

Spring in Maine is marked by a number of outdoors shows and exhibits. Over the weekend I attended two of them and as always it was great fun to visit with old friends from around the state and in different aspects of my business. Saturday I attended the LL Bean fishing expo at the new hunting and fishing store in Freeport. They had a good turnout with lots of interesting seminars. I spent a half an hour or so watching someone else teach flyfishing which I found extremely helpful. There is nothing like watching a different approach to teaching an activity.

Last Saturday was the annual kids ice fishing event sponsored by my neighbors in memory of their son. It was a great success with a great turnout. It was one of those events where I was thinking there was not much of a turnout. When I was way out on the ice setting a tip up for a child I turned and looked back and realized that there were easily a hundred people on the ice. We had an eagle watch the proceedings for a good part of the day which added to the positive atmosphere. I have not heard the final tally of attendance but apparently we went through 20 pounds of hot dogs.

Part of offering packages with the Samoset Resort is an annual review of what is and is not working. When we looked at the past two years the canoe trip packages were not performing. As I continued to review my own sales information I saw the same pattern. A declining number of canoe trips while family fishing and other fishing trips were on a steep upward curve. So I got the same message twice in less than a month, canoe trips are not performing well.

Yesterday I guided a couple of fisherman from Texas. I decided to try Megunticook because of the recent stockings of rainbow trout and the fact that it would be less affected by the recent rains and high water. We started around 11:30 and launched at Bog Brook with no problem plenty of water for the 20’ Lund.