Join me for our freshwater fishing adventures for 2024! Experience our thrill of reeling in the catches in the most stunning Maine fishing destinations. I will take you along as we discover spots where the fish are plentiful (hopefully) and the memories are priceless (definitely).  If you like what you see here, contact me and we can put a trip together. Tight lines!

Annabessacook Lake, Winthrop, ME  June 5, 2024

Here’s another one where you will check your spelling a few times before you get it right.  These places don’t come up on spell checker so you have to google it a few times to see you got your “a’s” in the right places.  You gotta love Maine.

The weather this week had only a few openings and today was the day to get out before I leave for Ireland on Sunday. There were warnings about afternoon thunderstorms but we decided to head out and try our luck with both the fish and the lightning.

On this trip, we were joined by Ron Colby and his oldest son, Lincoln.

I was glad that all the crowing I have been doing about the Ned Rig paid off again today.  Not only did the Ned produce, but it is also a benefit that the hooksets are mostly in the upper lip or side lip making landing them and unhooking them a breeze.

The launch at Annabessacook was brand new this year and is quite spectacular (as far as Maine boat launches go).  I should have taken some pictures of the launch but I was busy getting the boat ready.  Ron and Linc arrived right on time.  I was a bit early so I launched the boat and got her all set so they just had to walk on.

Earlier in the season, Bob Williamson and I tried out the lake on a cold and windy day.  We stayed primarily in the north end of the lake but there was a lot more to see.  Today, we headed south from the boat launch into a wider part of the lake and concentrated on shorelines where we saw a lot of nesting activity.  The water temps were in the high 70’s and even briefly broke 80º which blew my mind.

Ron has the touch and typically outfishes everyone else and today was no different.  Largemouths were the species of the day and while not spectacular it was enough to keep us interested.  He hooked into one that came out of the water about 50′ from the boat or so and it got off.  It was going to be scale worthy if we managed to land her.  I think the Ned Rig was the only thing to produce fish today but I only tried a few other things like a red chatterbait and a black and blue jig (which I still haven’t figured out yet).

South of us in Scarborough and North Yarmouth, the weather was nasty.  Heavy rain and lightning came through there while we were in a relatively calm middle area with weather fronts both north and south of us.  We could hear the thunder and Ron saw a few bolts of lightning in the visible sheets of rain off in the distance.  Ron’s wife Blair was texting us about whether we should still be out there.  It looked on radar that the storm was heading our way.

I have an app on my phone that tells me how far away the lightning is and it never got closer than four miles of us so we decided to watch the progress of that before we headed back to the launch.  Eventually, it started to sprinkle and we decided to pack it in.

There is a lot more to see on Annabessacook so I know I’ll be back there sometime this summer.  The ride from home was one hour and ten minutes so it’s not too bad.  The area around Winthrop has a lot of great lakes so I have been coming up this way a lot.  I have a bucket list of lakes to hit this summer and hopefully I’ll have some great stories to tell.

The boat is put to bed until the end of the month.  I come back from Ireland on June 23, 2024 so the Pelagic Zone will be a little quiet with fishing stories.  Come back to the website to see my travel blog .

Remember, I’m always looking for people to go fishing with so don’t be shy about hitting me up to put a trip together.

Cheers.

Live Long and Prosper.

Cobboseecontee Stream, Gardiner, ME  June 4, 2024

Last year, I joined the Gardiner Sportsmen’s Club to get access to their boat launch on the Cobbosseecontee Stream.  I have to admit typing that name is very long and prone to spelling errors with all the “s’s” “b’s” “e’s” “o’s” and “c’s” that you have to get in the right order.  Most of the time we just call it, “the stream.”

This day was absolutely gorgeous.  It was so gorgeous I took a panoramic video to show how calm it was, the blue sky, and the white puffy clouds.  It would be hard to find a day in Maine that was more perfect.  The temperatures were in the high 60’s and the water temps were in the low 70’s.  No wind. Very little other boat traffic. Glorious.

I had some good luck on Long Pond a few days prior using the Ned Rig and both Bob Williamson and I continued to find it productive even though were in very different structure.  Long Pond is primarily a rocky bottom while The Stream is very shallow and weedy.

I managed a few small largemouths while Bob bested me again with a nice 3# 2oz largemouth that was worthy of putting on the scale.  In general, the Ned Rig is really meeting up to all the hype that has been promoting it the last couple of years.

We were on the water about four hours when we decided to call it a day and head into Gardiner to get some beers at The Depot which is a great bar with great taps and a great menu.  Am I using the word, “great” too much?  This is a known commodity in the Gardiner areas and I’m sure we’ll be back.

Remember, I’m always looking for people to go fishing with so don’t be shy about hitting me up to put a trip together.

Cheers.

Live Long and Prosper.

Long Pond, Belgrade, ME  May 30, 2024

I’m running out of time to get some fishing in before I head out to Ireland so I thought I would take a trip up to Flying Pond in Vienna (pronounced in Maine as V”eye” ENNA) but when I got there the launch was insufficient for me to recover onto the trailer so I decided to head 10 minutes away to a lake a know oh so well.

We have been renting a camp on Long Pond in Belgrade for over 20 years.  It’s an amazing lake with lots to see and today was no different.

Before I get into that, I also wanted to remember that on my way to Flying Pond in Winthrop I had a bit of a blood pressure elevating experience when a moose jumped out of the woods in front of me.  I had to slam on the brakes to avoid him (her?  antlerless) which is always “exciting” when pulling a 21′ boat.  Luckily for both of us, the moose was able to jump back into the woods and disappear.  I didn’t have time to get my cell phone camera up to take a picture or this would have been part of the story.

The launch at Long Pond was relatively empty with only four other trailers in the parking lot so I got right out onto the water and rigged the boat’s electronics and my fishing gear.  I also put the plug in the livewell to test out my recent modification to improve the priming / filling and to rinse out the salt water that was previously in there from last weekend.  The pump worked great and so far, I am happy with the modification I did.

Once on the water and all set up, I headed south to the Ingham Stream which has been a productive spot in the past and is a famous spawning ground for very large Northern Pike.  I caught a large pickerel on a white Keitech swimbait but he chewed through my leader right at the boat as I attempted to net him.  Bye bye Keitech, we hardly knew ya.

I got out of the river and went back up north to a rocky area that is pretty well marked as far as fresh water lakes go.  A few weeks ago, when we were up to Lake Umbagog, a guy who was successful there was catching his limit while fishing in the rocky areas.  Following his lead, I managed to catch a couple of smallmouths on a suspending jerkbait in a yellow perch pattern.  They were relatively small, but as smallmouth are want to do, it was a good battle.

I remember from last year that there was a cove further up north near the Travis Mills Foundation that had a lot of nesting sites. I poked around in there with a white spinnerbait, a red chatterbait, and a red rattletrap but no luck.  Time to head even farther north under the bridge at Castle Island Road and through the fairway to the upper part of Long Pond.

The water was pretty high and I had to duck my head down going under the bridge but got through it with no scrapes.  I immediately headed to the shoreline where the Reilley camp was after stopping in front of my favorite camp on the lake called the Klir Camp.  If there was ever a camp I coveted, this would be the one.  We frequently fish in front of this camp in the evening and do pretty well there in the summer when the cabbage has grown up.  It is an amazing place to watch the sunset and have a few beers at the end of the day.  It is too early in the season for the weeds to grow out so the normal cover that the bass use here was not present.  No cover, no fish.  Time to move.

Just up the shoreline from the Reilley camp is Mr. Clarke’s camp.  Mr. Clarke passed away last year so someone in his family is now managing it.  It appeared to be in pretty good shape and came through the winter well.  It’s unknown if anyone will use it this year as from what I understand, most of his family is from the South.  Mr. Clarke was from Georgia and his grand daughter who used to play with my daugher Elizabeth lived in Florida when she was younger.  Not really sure what is happening there.

When I got to Mr. Clarke’s camp, I switched lures to try a Ned Rig.  You’ll see in the picture above I circled the Ned Rig for example.  This little itty bitty lure, no bigger than your pinky finger, lit up my rod like something I have not experienced in a long time.  I used to think the Wacky Worm was the most productive lure I ever threw until this moment.  I don’t know who this Ned guy is, but I want to thank him for one of the most exciting hour of fishing like nothing I had seen in quite a long time.  Years.

The Ned Rig is pretty brainless.  The soft elastic body floats so when you put a mushroom jig through one end, it tends to float perpendicular to the bottom.  I was just reeling it across the bottom with no other technique and I got hit after hit on the little thing.  I probably had over 50 nibbles but only (and I say this sheepishly) landed 13 smallmouth bass.  There was some action on practially every cast.  The picture above shows the 18 inch bruiser that fought like a champ and was probably three pounds or so.  Let’s just say, the Ned Rig will be a regular on the front deck of the boat from now on.  I will replace my default Wacky Worm which I have been trying to deprogram myself from with old Mr. Ned.  Simply amazing.

Interspersed with all the fish catching was another amazing treat of nature.  On the north end of Pinewold Point is a fantastic Bald Eagle nest at the top of a pine tree with views across the whole northern end of Long Pond.  This nest is always occupied with a screeching eaglet crying out to mommy or daddy to bring him a meal.  Today was no exception.  Mr. or Mrs. Eagle was out on the hunt and I was treated to a display of the mature bald eagle snatching a fish off the surface of the lake only about 75 yards off of my port bow.  If you have ever seen this display of acrobatics, you know how awesome (and I don’t ever use that word loosely) a spectacle this is.  As usual, I didn’t have my camera phone at the ready or I would have filmed a video of it.

After six hours on the water, and an hour and a half ride home back to Scarborough, I headed back to the ramp, stowed my gear and made it home without incident.  Truly a fantastic day, especially that last hour.

I hope you found this trip to be as exciting as I did.  I hope in the future you will contact me so we can fish together.

Cheers.

Live Long (Pond) and Prosper.

Umbagog Lake, May 17 – 20, 2024

The third weekend in May is traditionally when we make our way up to Errol, New Hampshire to the stunningly beautiful Lake Umbagog on the Maine Border.  I think it has been about 10 years that we have been coming up here to fish with my good friend Henry Alves and his wife Beth.  Unfortunately and painfully, Henry passed away in 2022 and that chapter came to a close.  Since then I have continued to come up here at the same time, in the same cabin, and also unfortunately the same luck.  We would go out and Henry and Beth would catch 50 fish in a day while Mary and I managed 10 or so (mostly Mary’s catch).  Just knowing that a 50 fish day was possible continues to haunt me and make me want to recreate the experience that seemed to come so easily to Henry.

This weekend, as with many at this time of year on Umbagog, was a little drizzly and cloudy.  The wind was generally calm which was nice for casting, but encouraged the black flies to come out of the woods and poke around to see if our blood tasted any better this year.  The black flies were not as bad as other years, but they are still a nuisance to the point I ask, “What purpose do you serve you little bastards?”

Last year I invited my friend Tony to come up with me.  Mary has lost interest in floating around in the boat surrounded by the black flies but misses the rides into Errol at dusk to see the moose in the roadside bogs.  It never fails to see a moose up here which is kind of cool considering they are not really common in most states.  They are much bigger than you think and you wonder sometimes how they squeeze between the trees in the dense forest.  Majestic is the word that comes to mind when I see one.

Fishing is more than just chuck and wind.  Out on the boat you see things like eagles, vistas, crazy weather, scary submerged rocks and bolders that will rip the bottom off of your outboard engine and sometime the fish cooperate to show you things you didn’t expect.  We arrived at Umbagog on Friday afternoon and after unpacking and having a little time on the front porch we headed out for our first attempts.  Over the winter I studied Umbagog and marked waypoints on my chart package to target when I got to the lake.  This third weekend of May is traditionally my first big fishing outing and the past winter I tried to apply all the hints and knowledge I had learned on YouTube and other resources on the net.  My thought was to pick northern shorelines that would be warmer than surrounding terrain due to the sun angle heating the water.  So today, I brought up my first waypoint, and started the Auto Guidance capability on the GPS.  This feature is pretty cool because it will plot a course that avoids dangerous areas like rocks and islands and using knowledge it has, will keep you in deep enough water to get your where you need to go safely.  It’s pretty damn cool.

We pulled up to the first spot and almost immediately I had a pretty nice pickerel on a red lipless crankbait commonly called a “Rattle Trap.”  When I landed the fish I was surprised to see that it had hooked itself in the mouth and the tail!  It reminded me of the ancient Greek Ouroboros.

Soon after this fish, Tony caught a fallfish or sometimes referred to as a chub which is like a giant minnow with big scales. We don’t keep fish to eat but I understand these aren’t very tasty anyway so we threw it back.  The interesting thing about this fish is that Tony had caught a fallfish last year on the same weekend.  Hysterical.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I think I caught another three or four pickerel but no bass and Tony didn’t land any either but I think I remember he had a pretty nice smallmouth bass on the hook that got off right at the boat.

We finished the day sitting on the porch drinking 10 year old Bushmills and later ate a lovely lamb stew that Tony’s wife Annie made for us to reheat.  Life is good.

When Henry died, Beth sent me one of his lucky fishing hats and I keep this hat on a special memorial shelf at home with picture of family members who have died, Mary’s dad’s folded US Flag from his casket and other special pictures.  Since 2022, I have been taking this hat with me up to Umbagog with the hopes that the incredible luck and skill that Henry had would flow through me.  It’s a tradition I have been keeping up with but the luck of the 50 fish day has not presented itself to me yet.  I am still optimistic that day is coming, but for now, I have to just keep plugging along trying to think, “What would Henry use to figure out the pattern.”  I hope that Beth is reading this and knows how much Henry is still in my thoughts and memories.

We both got some smallies on Saturday but no personal bests to brag about.  We caught just enough to keep it interesting and as we worked our way from waypoint to waypoint, we started to think my months of research and planning were probably not working.  The water temp was around 60º which was warmer than years past.  Ice out came early this year and I wasn’t sure if we were in a pre-spawn, spawn, or post-spawn pattern.  I had planned to fish in deeper water expecting the fish hadn’t moved up into their typical spawning depths but we didn’t have luck there.  I also didn’t see any nesting activity.  Umbagog has very clear water and you can typically see round circles on the bottom where the silt and debris has been cleared by the fish clearing an area with their tails.  So I was probably fishing in the wrong places, wrong depths, and of course using the wrong lures.

We fished on Saturday for about four hours and then the forecast rain started so we beat it back the dock with a rain pelting us while I tried to see. I took my sunglasses off for a minute but decided I better put them back on because the needle-like raindrops were very painful.  I’m going to have to look up the Mythbusters episode on YouTube where they tried to figure out if you get more wet if you run through a rainstorm or walk.  On this journey, we were going as fast as the boat would go to get us back.  When we arrived at the dock and stored the stuff we needed to, we then went to a friend of mine, John Thurston’s camp, in Upton, Maine which is just down the road.  We sat around his burn pit and did some guy talk with some of his other friends that were there.

After awhile, Tony and I made our way down into Bethel for dinner and a stop off at the Sunday River Brewing Company for a couple of pints.  It was a good day all-in-all even if it was cut short by the rain.

On one of our drifts along the shore at Umbagog, we came upon this bench which had a fishing pole, a tackle box, and a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.  I though it was kind of poetic to be just sitting there as if the occupant had just left to go get another beer.  Nothing fancy.  No thousands of dollars of fishing lures like me.  Just the bare essentials to get in touch with the lake that is sprawled in front.

On this Sunday, the skies were gray.  There was no wind.  The temperature of the water had gone down to 58º and the bugs were managable. I continued to force myself to avoid using the reliable wacky worm as I am trying to learn new techniques and methods. I was using mostly a chatterbait, a Keitech swim bait, and a suspended jerkbait with very little success.  Tony was using what I was using assuming I was some master fisherman.  Ha!  He finally asked if I had any wacky worms and of course I did so I put one on for him and he started to catch some fish.  Not a lot of fish, but one is better than none.

Tony and my wife Mary have some inside joke about faces he makes in pictures that I don’t actually remember.  When he caught this fish he had this scowl on his mug for the picture and I asked him about it but I think I was too distracted helping him unhook and trying not to run aground to actually remember the details of it.  I thought posting it here would spur some explanations from Mary or Tony to remind me.  Anyway, just to be clear, Tony doesn’t go around growling and brooding.  He had to put on this face as an act because he is eternally happy and funny and just a damn good sport, so maybe the irony of this picture is the joke itself that I don’t get.  I really enjoy my time spent with him and appreciate having time to talk with him about politics, life in general, family histories, our various work, and growing up Catholic in the 1960’s memories.  I call this “adult talk.”

Later that day we drifted down the headwaters of the Androscogging River which starts in Umbagog and along the shore we saw a moose just standing there (as moose do).  I couldn’t get my iPhone camera up in time to capture him before he (she? no antlers) ambled away into the woods but it is always fun to be surprised by seeing them either from the window of the car or from the boat.

That kind of finished off Sunday.  We fished hard and put in a full day so it was back to camp.  Knowing that we would have a relatively early start on Monday morning, we put the boat on the trailer.  Tony heated up some delicious chili that Annie made for us that we folded into burritos and killed what was left of the Bushmills and my flask of Redbreast 12 year old.

On Monday, we were on the road by 09:30 heading back to Scarborough.  The trip was uneventful with the exception that some idiot lights were coming on.  I figured the were more warnings than emergencies so we just made our way back home safely.  It was a great weekend away.  The tradition continues and I hope that Tony will come along again with me next year.

Cheers.

Upper Range Pond, May 7, 2024

For those of you keeping score at home, you might notice this isn’t the same post that came out on May 8, 2024.  On May 10, 2024 the PelagicZone website disappeared off of planet Earth.  I only have a peripheral idea of what caused this but coincidentally my control panel at Godaddy was  updated the night before.  I fought to get the site back up and in the end decided to do a restore from the previous night’s backup.  While this posting may not be as interesting as the first one, at least it’s fresh content.

Ron and I went out on this Tuesday based on the weather report and we were not disappointed.  It was a bluebird day, generally warm (I wore shorts) and the water temp was a very nice pre-spawn 60º.  Wonderful.

Again Ron bested me with his three catches and a fourth one that slipped the hook right at the boat.  He used a bluegill colored square bill and that seemed to be the ticket considering that I tried other things that were completely ineffective.

I was using a red chatterbait with a red trailer (as I had been schooled all winter on YouTube) and had nary a bite.  I also threw a white spinner bait with a white trailer.  Bupkis.  We gave the Upper Range (pronounced “rang” in Maine) Pond (URP) and also took a sojurn into Middle Range Pond (MRP) becuase I wanted to show Ron where the summer bite would be when the weeds grew up.  That was more of a recon mission for that part of the lake.  I will say that we did NOT get over the Nonesuch Brewing Company dock to stop in for a beer but maybe someday.

We also were able to have a sea trial on Ron’s boat after he solved a pretty serious leak in the livewell plumbing system which almost caused us to sink the previous week while we were out on the Cobbosseecontee Stream in Gardiner.  That was a story unto itself.

Well, I hope this post doesn’t break the website and you’ll come back soon to see our continuing adventures.

Cheers.

Annabessacook Lake, April 29, 2024

Bob and I went out for the first trip on the boat for 2024.  The day was pretty windy and cold with water temperature only 52º.  The plan was to use red chatterbaits, white spinnerbaits, and suspending jerk baits.  I used the noisy stuff.  We were blown around quite a bit.  I could really use a new trolling motor with spot lock (maybe someday).  I thought we would try to fish in 10′ to 15′ feet of water to find the pre-spawn fish staging to move into the shallows, but with the conditions, we opted to try to get into as sheltered a location as possible.  Bob got a pickerel first and then later a crappie on the jerkbait.  Even though it was my birthday, I was not gifted any fish.  The boat worked great though for a first time out, so that’s good.