Maine.....I have no idea!

[onthehunt]

Seriously.....

I have never been, really do not have a clue, but am wanting to know.

We are from the upper Midwest and I cut my teeth fishing those areas. We are talking upper Midwest fisheries and Sunset Country in Northwest Ontario. Smallmouth, Largemouth, Pike, Muskie, Kings, Steelhead, Trout.....I fished them all. While I enjoy chasing Trout, especially on technical fisheries, I am a warm water, big fly, big fish guy! My three favorite species to chase are Smallmouth, Muskie and Steelhead!

Having said this, we are currently in the *&# $(%* desert of Phoenix, Arizona and I can not wait the get the *&$@ out of here. Thus, the dilemma arises. I like the mountains, it just needs to be the northern Rockies. We are looking into western Montana, central to southern Oregon, possibly Idaho, northern Wisconsin and perhaps Maine. The better half LOVES Maine. I have never been. My thoughts and what I am telling her are that Maine is basically northern Wisconsin or Minnesota, except you replace the Atlantic with either Lake Michigan or Lake Superior, so why not move back to the upper Midwest!

So, for those of you in the know.....

what does Maine have to offer a guy like me, who is a warm water junkie who loves chasing Smallmouth, Muskie and Steelhead?

Here is what I know; Maine has everything I like to chase, plus Striper, minus the Steelhead. One of my questions is, how good is the Smallie and Muskie fishing? Also, what is there to chase in late Fall, Winter and early Spring, when I would normally be in pursuit of Steelhead in the upper Midwest?

I looking for any and as much information as I can get! If it is up to me, she brought me to the desert, I'm takin' her back to the upper Midwest! LOL.

Thank You in advance to those who contribute to this!

 

[Ard]

I always enjoyed it more in September. Many streams close early but most of the good land lock salmon rivers remain open until the end of the month. I fished in Piscataquis and Aroostook counties from 1979 - 1994 but have not been back since. Only once was I there in Summer and the bugs can be more plentiful than the fish at times. Most notably blackflies, bad medicine those things.

Fall is the spawn run for the salmon and they are very active in the rivers. They can be more predictable during the run and that's why season closes October 1st. There are no bugs, the fall colors are spectacular due to the density of maple trees in the mix and I can't think of a better time to see Maine!

If you go in fall take the back roads home through VT. & New Hampshire you will not soon forget the towns and all the tall white steeples of the churches. That's why I went every year

 

[Rip Tide]

There's basically no muskie. Only one lake that I can think of. Very little northern pike for that matter too and smallmouth are considered trash fish by many fly fishermen.
At one river, you're even encouraged to throw them in the bush.
Maine is all about the brook trout (and land locked salmon) and any predator of the brookie is not welcome.

... However... there's some outstanding smallmouth fishing in both rivers and lakes and get more popular all the time

 

[onthehunt]

There's basically no muskie. Only one lake that I can think of. Very little northern pike for that matter too and smallmouth are considered trash fish by many fly fishermen.
At one river, you're even encouraged to throw them in the bush.
Maine is all about the brook trout (and land locked salmon) and any predator of the brookie is not welcome.

... However... there's some outstanding smallmouth fishing in both rivers and lakes and get more popular all the time

Sounds like this **** hole we are in now. They had a world class Pike fishery here and destroyed it. I'm talking about a lake that for me, produced average Pike of 37"-39", with my best being a 43". They gill netted it to rid the Pike, to keep yet another put and take Trout fishery.

I'm not against Trout, but you had a fishery that produced Pike that folks spend $3,000 plus US a week to go to northern Canada for and they gill net it! For the 10,000th put and take Trout fishery in the state! On a side note, I got into it with one of the Game and Fish biologists via email over this. The end of the email chain came when he told me the Pike were not native and I enlightened him that neither were the bath tub Trout they were stocking!

I googled Maine Muskie and saw some nice pictures, but if it is not worth it and the Smallies are trash, hell, that puts me right where I am now, only with better scenery. I guess Maine may be nixed from the list before it gets started!

Again, love Trout, but if someone tells me to my face that they would rather catch a 14"-16" Trout over a 40" plus Pike or Muskie, they are lying!

 

[stanbiker]

I've never heard of big Pike and Muskie, but there is some good small mouth fishing there. Most people there fish for brook trout and landlocked salmon, but there are a bunch into warm water as well. Check out the Penobscot river in Medway for smallmouth.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

[Rip Tide]

Sounds like this **** hole we are in now.

Maine is far from being a shithole. It's a beautiful place. They're just protective of their brookies.
90% of all native brook trout in the USA reside in the great state of Maine and they'd like to keep it that way.
A 3 to 5 pound brook trout is a beautiful thing.
They don't call Maine "vacation land" for nothing.
The northern 2/3 of the state is one big tree farm loaded with lakes and streams
and people flock to the coast for the scenery.
No, it's no shithole.
We had a cottage on the shore last September (I prefer the woods) and ate our fill of lobster almost nightly. $3.49lb off the dock... can't beat it.

 

[gt05254]

What Rip Tide said, to the max!
Gary

 

[Rip Tide]

I grabbed this photo off FB of my friend Philippa and a smallmouth that she caught at a "down east" lake last summer (hope she doesn't mind )
Looks like a nice one to me.

 

[onthehunt]

First, I want to apologize to any I offended. I did not want to infer that Maine was a POS, as we all know it is a beautiful state!

I was simply trying to reference that fact that I was displeased with the fisheries management where I am and that when I move, I want to be in an area where there are high numbers of the fish I like to pursue.

It is great that Maine has some opportunities for Smallmouth and one or two opportunities for Muskie. Again, I want to be where the numbers of those species are higher. That is a nice Smallie in the picture, however, I want those to be more common than one or two like that a year.

 

[Ard]

Frankly I'm surprised that I ended up in Alaska, Maine was my first choice. All those years, sometimes a three week wandering about the state, summertime motorcycle trips up or down on Rt. 1 it's beautiful. Places with names like Bucksport right at the head of Penobscot Bay are fond memories and yes the lobsters were a bargain there too Paul

I always wanted to do a 2 week camp & float down the Allagash but never got it done, that will be one of those loose ends when I'm too old.......... I climbed Katahdin 4 times taking a different way up each time, I couldn't get enough. One year I spent 2 weeks back at Spenser Bay and fished the Roach when you could catch 10 - 20 salmon a day if you were on your game. Made a friend up in Jackman who had the General Store there and what he didn't know about the salmon I didn't need to know.... Maine is quite a place, had I bought those 52 acres at Monson back in 82 I would have ended up there. When I think of that land I could cry, 52 acres for $13,000 and yes there was a trout stream and mature timber, duh, what was I thinking? I was eyeballing land right next to my home in the mountains of Pennsylvania and scared of having too many irons in the fire I guess.

Maine was always a dream and still is for me.

 

[Rip Tide]

......... I climbed Katahdin 4 times taking a different way up each time, I couldn't get enough.

When my boy was 7, I took him up Katahdin via 'the knife's edge'.
He moaned the whole time until we got to the scary part.
At that point I was all keen to turn around but no, he wanted to keep going

 

[Ard]

I liked 'Dudley' best for going up, you have to cross Knife's Edge to reach the summit that way and then down Cathedral through the boulders. Did you ever stay in the bunk houses at Chimney Pond Park? I did that once and was happy breaking the trip into a three day event. On the way to Chimney Pond I shot up 3 or 4 rolls (36 exposures) of Kodachrome so it took a while. Then I went to the top day 2 and took my time wandering around, slept at the bottom of the Cathedral trail and came back to Sandy in the morning.

I scanned some pictures from Main a few years ago, they look better as slides but.......

This is one of 4 little brooks you cross on the trail up from Sandy.


This was a September sunset in 1981 taken from Lilly Bay State Park on Moosehead Lake.


This is that big bridge you pass somewhere above Dexter, I wondered if the flooding took it away.

 

[bear 007]

We do have Muskie up here, this is probably what you googled, don't worry they are not going away no matter how many tournaments we have. Up here the only put and take fish that we have are basically in the lakes around the populated areas. From what I can gather the Muskie were illegally stocked from Quebec, there's a good chance that they will spread through our system of lakes that currently supports native populations of Landlocked Salmon and Brookies, hopefully I won't be around when this happens. I don't mean to offend any Muskie fisherman, I'm sure they are a blast, but I love the pull of a nice big LL Salmon and the fall colors of my Brookies.

Again, love Trout, but if someone tells me to my face that they would rather catch a 14"-16" Trout over a 40" plus Pike or Muskie, they are lying!

I'll take a 30" LL any day!

 

[4wt]

Beautiful photos.

I have to admit that my biggest failure is that I've pretty much only done car camping. I want that to change this year. Maine seems like a great spot to hike around and find some brooks and ponds. Need to research exactly where to go.

I'm going to take my company's unlimited vacation policy to the max...

 

[rockriver]

I lived in Caribou in 1968 and part of 1969, loved it.

 

[Ard]

Again, love Trout, but if someone tells me to my face that they would rather catch a 14"-16" Trout over a 40" plus Pike or Muskie, they are lying!

Nah, not necessarily. I've caught the trout and the pike, I've never caught a musky, but I would prefer a healthy 16" wild rainbow trout over the 40" pike. It's just a preference thing with me. Now if we were to stretch that to choosing between a 16" rainbow and a 50" pike I would go with the 50" pike because I never caught one that size. There are some around but I haven't caught one.

Ard

 

[onthehunt]

Nah, not necessarily. I've caught the trout and the pike, I've never caught a musky, but I would prefer a healthy 16" wild rainbow trout over the 40" pike. It's just a preference thing with me. Now if we were to stretch that to choosing between a 16" rainbow and a 50" pike I would go with the 50" pike because I never caught one that size. There are some around but I haven't caught one.

Ard

Totally get it!

Some folks are into Trout and the mystic that goes with them. The purity, the cleanliness, the beauty. I get it. Preferences of some are different than those of others.

While I like to match wits with Trout and think pursuing a single fish and trying to get it to rise to a dry is great.....

I'm a big fly, big fish, reckless abandon type of hit guy.

I guess my preference is blindly casting over weed beds, points and reefs, never knowing when that explosion or bone jarring take will happen. Then feeling the power of those big fish, seeing those teeth that want to cut you. I love it!

But, that is why there are so many rods, reels, lines, flies, locations and fish. I think we can all agree, that no matter what our preference is, we all enjoy dabbling in other scenarios, for other species. It is why we do it!

 

[redgrayghost]

To be honest, your style preference is somewhat looked down on in Maine. Pike, Musky, Smallmouth.... All invasive species put introduced by people who were greedy and breaking the law. Sure they are fun, we have an amazing smallie fishery in the Bangor area, that being said people who fly fish in Maine do so for 2 reasons (mostly).. Stripers and brookies... they trap Pike and remove them and Musky are in the northern most woods of the state..

Not trying to be a dick just saying, sounds like a bad match to me. I'll take a 16" brookie from Rangeley over any musky, something about the beauty of it all.

 

[onthehunt]

To be honest, your style preference is somewhat looked down on in Maine. Pike, Musky, Smallmouth.... All invasive species put introduced by people who were greedy and breaking the law. Sure they are fun, we have an amazing smallie fishery in the Bangor area, that being said people who fly fish in Maine do so for 2 reasons (mostly).. Stripers and brookies... they trap Pike and remove them and Musky are in the northern most woods of the state..

Not trying to be a dick just saying, sounds like a bad match to me. I'll take a 16" brookie from Rangeley over any musky, something about the beauty of it all.

I get where you are coming from and fully understand it. I understand that the Atlantic Stripper is native, as are the Brookies. I also understand how people want to protect native species.

However, here in the west, it just kills me how people do not want Bass, Pike, Carp, etc. They proclaim their love of everything Trout and would not be caught fishing anything else. Yet, when the topic arises that the Trout they oh so love are not native either, they don't know wtf to say!

I do think I would absolutely fall in love with the coastal Striper thing! I have fished freshwater Striper on fly and it is a blast. I can not imagine being on the coast, launching streamers to 20lb. plus Striper!

Vermont could be an option as well, but the more we look at it, it will either be a return to the upper Midwest or the northern Rockies, PNW.

 

[redgrayghost]

I get where you are coming from and fully understand it. I understand that the Atlantic Stripper is native, as are the Brookies. I also understand how people want to protect native species.

However, here in the west, it just kills me how people do not want Bass, Pike, Carp, etc. They proclaim their love of everything Trout and would not be caught fishing anything else. Yet, when the topic arises that the Trout they oh so love are not native either, they don't know wtf to say!

I do think I would absolutely fall in love with the coastal Striper thing! I have fished freshwater Striper on fly and it is a blast. I can not imagine being on the coast, launching streamers to 20lb. plus Striper!

Vermont could be an option as well, but the more we look at it, it will either be a return to the upper Midwest or the northern Rockies, PNW.

I think Vermont is a step in the wrong direction there =P And it's too damn cold!!

If you don't move here, you HAVE to make a trip here sometime.. Striper fishing on the fly will change your life