Featured Articles
Salmon : Why Aren’t They Big as They Used to Be?
By Randy Spencer If you talk to old-timers who fished the great salmon lakes of Maine—Moosehead, Sebago, East Grand, or West Grand—in the 1950s and ’60s, you’ll hear stories of hefty landlocked salmon tipping the scales at five, six, even eight pounds with regularity. Back then, a 20-inch salmon wasn’t a bragging right; it was … Continued
Moosehead New Record Brookie
By V. Paul Reynolds Greenville native and ardent angler Eric Ward is accustomed to hog- wrestling impressive brook trout out of his ice hole and on to the frozen surface of Moosehead Lake. In fact, according to Greenville fisheries biologist Tom Obrey – who keeps an eagle eye on angling successes on the big lake … Continued
Timely Tips On Tippets
By Bob Mallard While restocking my Fly Vest and Driftboat Bag in preparation for spring last week, I realized just how complex the world of Fly Fishing tippet material had become. As one of the most important components in regard to a properly rigged Fly Fishing outfit, I am surprised that some anglers … Continued
Wolves in a Test Tube
BY Matt Dunlap Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction. In 1993, the blockbuster science fiction film Jurassic Park had a plotline that a group of paleo-geneticists had extracted dinosaur DNA from fossils, and had been able to create a new generation of velociraptors and other large herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs. When, in the movie, everything … Continued
Maine’s Last Indian Scare
Steve Pinkham Maine’s early wars with the various Wabenaki tribes that resided on the Saco, Androscoggin, Kennebec, Penobscot, and St. Croix Rivers, were fought mostly from the mid-1600s to the 1750s, which involved numerous attacks along the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire and along the Merrimac River in Massachusetts. The last attacks on the coast … Continued
Do Fishermen Lie?
By V. Paul Reynolds As a fisherman myself, as well as a writer who observes other fishermen, I have noticed that we fishermen, in our enthusiasm, do tend to take liberties. There are two common misrepresentations practiced by the angling community. The first is more of an innocent fib, or little white lie. This is … Continued
Spring Trolling: Best Waters
By Bud Leavitt Editor’s note: Maine’s late, well-known outdoor writer Bud Leavitt left us his legacy between the pages of his only book, Twelve Months in Maine. In this monthly feature, we reprint selected excerpts from his book courtesy of Bangor Publishing Company. One day at West Grand Lake, Elliot and I were fishing the … Continued
The Trapper’s Shack
V. Paul Reynolds The trapper’s shack, in the beginning, was just that. I first beheld it in the spring of 1968. Friends Ron Hastie, Dana Young and I used it in 1968 as our “base camp” for a week during the construction of Ron’s camp. The leaning shack was about 12’ X 14”. It … Continued
BIrch Bark Canoes
Suzanne AuClair This year, it will be the summer of the birch bark canoe. For anyone interested, you might want to take a ride up, camp out, do some fishing, hang out for a few days in God’s country. On Wednesday and Thursday, July 23-24, the owners of birch bark canoes from around … Continued
The Whisker Thing
By Mark McCollough You do not see many blind deer…or foxes, or flying squirrels for that matter. How do they run at breakneck speeds (or glide in the case of flying squirrels) headlong through the dense forest without eventually ‘poking their eyes out?’ How do they travel swift-of-foot through a winter forest as … Continued