Complements of The Kittery Trading Post

Activity for the last week of July, 2001

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July 30, 2001

      The mid-summer dog days haven't  adversely affected the inland fishing, especially in some of the northern Maine areas. Water temperatures and levels in areas remain quite good, and surface fishing continues for some of the cold water species, especially during low-light periods. Saltwater news seems to get better, especially concerning the offshore big-game fish.

      Dave Ganter at the Kittery Trading Post's Fishing Department, passed on several bits of information relative to the local striper and bluefish action. "One of our staff, Chad Woodward, had an incredible outing with some friends on the Piscataqua River. They were fishing at night near the outlet of one of the power plants. With chunk mackerel, they caught several stripers up to forty inches long. The tide was outgoing, with only a couple hours to go," Dave reports.

      "Another one of our staff, RJ Mere, had reports of bluefish from here all the way to Kennebunkport. Several striper fishermen coming in have complained about bluefish cutting off their baits while striper fishing. There doesn't seem to be much consistency about where the blues will be on any given day, but it's a good choice to try around the ledges at the Isles of Shoals. Live bait floated on balloon bobbers about 15 feet down always seem to be a good choice. You also have a chance at landing one of the huge stripers occasional caught at the 'Shoals," Dave suggests.

      "We've still got plenty of stripers here, mostly in the 24-34 inch range but baitfish are getting scarce at times," reports Jim MacKenzie at Suds-n-Soda in Greenland, NH. "If you want mackerel or pollock for live bait, you'd better be on the water at daylight. You've got to chum--the schools of baitfish are particularly skittish from bluefish chasing them. They don't like to stay in one spot for too long. The area around the #2KR (Kitts Rocks) Buoy off the mouth of the Piscataqua is a good place to start. We've been using Sabiki bait rigs with a mackerel jig on the bottom. Another good place to try is around the West Sister's Ledge off Kittery Point. There's always pollock there. If you can't catch them chumming and jigging, try trolling with a pair of mackerel jigs, but you need to be cautious around the ledge--it gets pretty shallow there, actually coming out of water at low tide," he said.

      Mac suggests that when you're over a pod of baitfish that don't want to hit your bait rig, if you cast out past the fish and let the rig settle down into the school of fish, you'll get some to grab it. Chum can be as simple as mixing dog food with some kind of vegetable or fish oil. Believe it or not, Gravy Train dry dog food seems to be a favorite, as it breaks down faster when wet and creates a great chum slick.

      Pepperell Cover off Kittery Point remains the best spot for flounder. Jim said that a couple that come each weekend pick up a good feed of flounder every trip there.

      "We're still experiencing some wonderful offshore groundfishing, even though it seems to have slowed down a bit on Jeffrey's Ledge," reported Cal Robinson at Saco Bay Tackle. "Tanners ledge continues to be very good, especially early in the morning and there's a good chance of picking a few cod or haddock off of some of the other smaller inshore ledges."

      "Shark fishing has started to heat up. All the boats out shark fishing last week had some action, mostly on blue sharks, although we've had some reports of mako sightings. Giant bluefin tuna fishing keeps getting better, in fact, tomorrow, we're going to be able to go to a two-fish-a-day limit, which hasn't been seen here in decades. At the Bailey's Island Tuna Tourney, a fish just under 500 pounds won the contest, caught out of a 20-foot boat. There's been a lot of big fish caught out of small boats."

      Cal also noted that stripers remained steady in his area, but that the bluefishing had been spotty, slowing down quite a bit from last week's excellent fishing.

      "Early yesterday morning we had a striper and bluefish surface blitz, all the way from Deer Island to Grave's Light," reported Pete Santini at   Fishing FINatics Bait and Tackle in Everett. "The birds were working, the fish were breaking all over the place, and there were about two dozen boats catching blues to 40 inches and stripers to 42 inches. A lot of them were calling me on their cell phones--it was quite a show. Most of the fish were caught trolling with the Santini Tube-n-Worm combo, but some of the guys that were casting to the fish were hitting them on broken backed Rapala plugs. At 10am, the fish went down and it was all over," Pete said.

      "Stripers were hitting off the Police Station at Revere Beach, and for the first time in many years, flounders were being caught off the shore--at Winthrop's Four Sisters Breakwater. Flounder had also returned in force to the waters off Deer Island, where Chincoteaugue flounder rigs and flounder spreader bars, both baited with sea worms, were working the best. Codfish from 10-15 pounds were hitting well three miles past the B Buoy. Jigs or clams were working the best for cod," Pete explained.

      Pete's suggested method for tube-n-worm trolling is to use leadcore line. "Let out two or three colors of leadcore, depending on the depth of water you're fishing. You don't need to use a whole seaworm on the hook, but you do need to use some natural bait or they just don't seem to work. You can troll at various speeds, and go with, against, or cross current, whatever the situation calls for. Actually, in a fast current, some of the veteran tubers like to get up-tide of where they suspect fish to be, and they actually back-troll their lures, dropping them back onto the structure that's holding the fish. In deeper water, this technique works especially well," Pete advised.  More and more fishermen also have had success tipping their tubes with cut bait.

      Kay Moulton at Surfland Bait and Tackle on Plum Island, reported that you'd better be out on the water early in the morning, especially if you're a lure fisherman. "The striper guys fishing lures do well until the sun gets up. They've been averaging a half dozen real nice fish in the 26-28 inch range each morning. But as soon as the sun comes up, it's all over. I don't know why, but the bait fishermen continue to be able to pick away at the stripers all day long, but nothing like that early morning bite. We had some bluefish along the beaches here yesterday morning, but so far today we've had no reports. Flounder are on and off, so unpredictable, but we have had our first authenticated report of a few fluke that have moved into the Merrimack River here, so they may be just starting. Last year was a pretty good fluke year here. Mackerel are so skittish. Fishermen that usually furnish us with a couple hundred for bait are showing up with about a quarter of that amount. Breaking Rocks, about a mile offshore near the New Hampshire border, has been about the steadiest place for mackerel," Kay ended.

      Maine's bass fishing continues to be spectacular and under-utilized, reports Dave Ganter at the Kittery Trading Post. "We had a chance to float the Kennebec River downstream from Waterville, fishing for smallmouth in kayaks. I was fishing with Harry Vanderweide, who was doing some filming for an upcoming video he's producing. We had spectacular fishing, using mostly white grubs and plastic crawfish with chartreuse claws. We caught dozens upon dozens of smallies on light spinning tackle, generally in the chunky two-pound range. It was so nice. The solitude of being on a great stretch of river like that with only one other boat seen the whole day. Harry said that this was typical, but the fish are usually bigger!"

      "The Belgrade Lakes bass fishing has also been wonderful. Smallmouths are gathering on the humps about 15 feet down. Carolina rigged plastic lizards are producing very well. Closer to home here, Little Sebago Lake has been good for topwater smallmouth action--even in the heat of the day," Dave mentioned.

      Wayne Davis at Dave Garcia's Naples Bait, also reports the bass fishing has been hot on nearby Long Lake and other local waters. "Probably my picks for the best local bass ponds would be Little Sebago (Windham) and Thompson Lake  (Casco). There's also been some great panfishing reported from those lakes, and we've been hearing more and more about the wonderful black crappie action over at Parker Pond, also in Casco. There's been some steady brown trout and salmon fishing here on Long Lake and some really nice browns coming from Middle Range Pond in Poland," Wayne offered.

      Sebago Lake Sage Carroll Cutting at Jordan's Store in East Sebago, reports seeing a lot of people out having a good time with the bass. “And the salmon die-hards are catching a surprising amount of fish without having to go deep. Some of them are fishing with up to six colors of leadcore, while a few have stuck to sinking fly lines and are even using streamer flies, especially at daylight. Sewed-on baits are also working well. The salmon being caught, although not huge, are in a lot better shape than they were the first of the season. The best salmon seem to be coming out of Tricky Pond in Naples.    Togue fishing on Sebago remains very good, with catches of a dozen or more fish per boat each day being the case," Carroll observed.

      Jim Pellorin, Assistant Regional Biologist in that area, said that one of the district wardens reported some good native brookie fishing in Oxford County--fish in the 6-10 inch size. "Many of our small streams and beaver flowages maintain cooler water temperatures and provide great action for trout all summer long. Catching these wild brookies is generally not very difficult, but one needs to be willing to beat the bushes and put up with biting insects," Jim allowed.

      Jim also notes that brown trout, which are able to tolerate warmer water temperatures than brook trout, provide some fine mid-summer fishing. He includes Upper and Middle Range Ponds (Poland), Little Sebago Lake (Windham), Crystal Lake (Gray), and Mousam Lake (Acton). He also notes that good stream fishing for brown trout can be expected during the summer at the Little Androscoggin River (W. Paris to Auburn), Pleasant River (Windham), Nezinscot River (Buckfield), Little River (Gorham to Berwick), Great Works River (Berwick), Nonesuch River (Scarborough) and the Cold River (Stowe).

      Rusty Harvey at River's Edge Sports in Oquossoc in the Rangeley area, still is enthused about the way the trout and salmon fishing has been holding out there. "We weighed a bunch of nice salmon this week from Rangeley Lake--fish in the four pound, 22 inch size range. Mooselookmeguntic Lake has really started to heat up again with salmon in the three to four pound sizes. Fly fishermen are reporting good action on the lower Magalloway River. Upper Dam continues to produce some good action for both trout and salmon. The Kennebago River has some fish, especially at the Steep Bank Pool, but they're stale and are hard to get to come to a fly. They've had a lot of stuff thrown at them. The best chance is to be the first in the morning to show them a fly," Rusty instructed.

      The Granite State has been producing some very good action for warm water species and trout and salmon. The Kittery Trading Post’s RJ Mere and his party found a lot of rainbow trout rising to a hatch on the Ellis River. They had a tough time matching the hatch, but when they did, their success was worth it. "The flies that hatch are often hard to describe and even harder to match at times, but that's the fun of it. If I could have described those flies that were hatching that day, it would lessened the sport for those that follow, and besides, things probably have changed since then."

      Tink Nelson at Nute's Trading Post in Wakefield, says that bass are the big thing there. "When you've got lakes like Wentworth and Winnipesaukee in your backyard, you're living in smallmouth heaven. This time of year we go searching for those rocky shallow ledges that are usually marked with a black and white buoy. Fish off the edges, in water at least 15 feet deep. Live crawfish are deadly, as are any number of plastic baits. Rigging Carolina style gets your bait down to the fish quicker. We've been using the Cortland Blackspot line on spinning reels and have been able to fish with 35 lb. test line that is about the same diameter as 10 lb. mono. Rigging this Carolina style, the Blackspot signals the strikes so much better and has absolutely no stretch. When you set the hook, it goes in instantly," Tink reports.

      "Summer also can be incredible lake trout time around here. Great East Lake (NH/ME border) and Silver Lake (Madison) have both been producing some lakers. Spoons like you'd use in the spring--Mooselook Wobblers, Flash Kings, and other flutter type spoons have been working well. We've heard of fish over 15 pounds caught and released at Great East," Tink noted.

      "Two brothers came off the lake on Friday, and they'd caught three landlocked salmon, two rainbow trout, two lakers and one bass," Bill Martel at Martel's Bait and Tackle in Laconia reported. "Our Lake Winnisquam is getting to be like the good old days. We've got a good population of smelt and it's starting to show with the quality of the trout and salmon. The bass fishing has also been great. And it looks like we're going to be a black crappie lake. We had a couple come in here yesterday with a bunch of them they'd caught at the upper end of the lake," Bill said.

      George Malloy at River's Edge General Store in Berlin, reported that fishermen were now concentrating on bass on the stretch of the Androscoggin River near his store. He'd taken his four year-old grand daughter, Danielle Jubert, out in his boat for her first-ever fishing trip. When the first of the four bass she caught came into the boat, she went and hid behind her grandmother! But by the time she'd hauled in her fourth bass, she was acting like it was old hat! Another youngster, Kyle Hagar from Berlin, had a big thrill when he pulled in a brook trout from the Androscoggin Valley Fish and Game Club's Little People's Pond. Malloy weighed the trout--it was well over two pounds! George said that again this week, Dummer Pond in Dummer was the best local trout pond.  

                     Past Fishing Reports 2001

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