Gone Fishin'

Sunday 6/12/11

Jeff got up at 4:30am to meet his fly fishing guide, Chris, for a 5:00am fishing trip on the Kennebec River. He wore everything he brought and was still cold. The temperature was about 48 degrees but with the wind chill and the drizzle, it seemed much colder. What the heck? It's the middle of June, for Pete's sake! He fished until 11am when the 325 cubic feet/second became 5000 cf/s...something to do with water being released from Moosehead Lake via a dam. He said the rushing water sounded like a freight train headed for their raft. Chris wasn't concerned since this dam release is a daily occurrence. He caught a brook trout and a dozen inland salmon and returned for lunch a cold, happy angler.

Then I joined them for a two hour raft ride down the river. Since I don't know how to fly fish, Chris was kind enough to equip me with a spin caster and gave me the front seat in the raft. My angler sat in the back and let Chris coach me on how to use the rod and where to cast.

We floated past our b&b...

Sometimes the water was smooth and flowed gently...

Other times, it got a little feisty...

Since it was catch and release, this guy got a new lease on life...

He has on seven layers and I have on four layers... 

and that bulge on my left side is my camera under my coat!

My happy angler...

The weather here varies, according to the locals, but apparently, this cold snap is quite unusual. They said it was 90 degrees last week and the black flies were as thick as, well...as thick as flies. Supposedly, construction workers have to wear netting over their heads during the dreaded black fly season. The one advantage of this cold weather is that the flies weren't as plentiful. But, Jeff said they drove him crazy during his morning fishing before the water started rushing and shooing them away. This area is moose country. Moosehead Lake is nearby and all the t-shirts in the outfitter's places have moose on them. Chris told us that the black flies and mosquitoes get so bad that the moose often go to the middle of the road just to get out of the woods and away from the bugs. 

Jeff took a much-needed nap and I sat in the living room of the lodge overlooking the river I had just floated down, sorting through photos of our trip and documenting our adventures on this blog. Then we went down the road to Northern Outfitters for dinner. They have a great chef out in the middle-of-nowhere-Maine and we were happy we found him. We started with chili...don't think I've ever eaten chili in June, but it tasted good on this cold, drizzly night. It was some of the best I've eaten and he was kind enough to give us his recipe. Our trout, baked potatoes and broccoli meal was a superb. As we went to bed, it really began to rain hard. It made a nice sound on the metal roof and we just hoped that the front would blow on through and bring some clear weather for the rest of our trip. I don't think it's fair to have rain on your vacay.