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Going to Maine-need fishing advice.
salzo
Member Posts: 6,396 ✭✭
We are leaving for Maine tomorrow, going to be staying on a Lake in the down east region.
I want to bring a fishing pole, I have no idea what to get-specificially, do I get a "light" rod, or a "medium rod"-what kind of test should I have 4,6,10,20- I have no idea about freshwater fishing. what about lures? What kind of fish should I expect to catch? I am really goin about this very casually, I dont plan on spending a lot of time devoted to fishing-just looking for something to use when Im hanging out in the backyard.
"Waiting tables is what you know, making cheese is what I know-lets stick with what we know!"
-Jimmy the cheese man
I want to bring a fishing pole, I have no idea what to get-specificially, do I get a "light" rod, or a "medium rod"-what kind of test should I have 4,6,10,20- I have no idea about freshwater fishing. what about lures? What kind of fish should I expect to catch? I am really goin about this very casually, I dont plan on spending a lot of time devoted to fishing-just looking for something to use when Im hanging out in the backyard.
"Waiting tables is what you know, making cheese is what I know-lets stick with what we know!"
-Jimmy the cheese man
Comments
Ben
Play Ball!!!
"Waiting tables is what you know, making cheese is what I know-lets stick with what we know!"
-Jimmy the cheese man
This is a pretty comprehensive source of information. Dig around and you will find depth maps, etc.
If you are into smallmouths, you can fish lightweight to ultralight for them and have a blast. They're off the beds now, but, you still be able to find plenty of action. One thing for sure, while you will have a near impossible task getting the locals to reveal their favored salmonid secrets, most anybody will let you know where to find bass. Enjoy your trip. Bring your bug dope! The watch out for moose signs you see on the highway are for real.
Buy a Zebco rod & reel combo from Wal-Mart for under $25.00
Buy a small tackle set for about $7.00 (hooks, sinkers, bobers, etc)
Fish with crickets, worms, weiners, bread, paper, livers
Catch whatever bites - like sunfish/perch.
Screw Allah & Have a Great Day!
Man's last hope... The Star Wars Kid.. Jedi Master!
That's a good start.
Maybe somebody else can suggest a good spinnerbait and/or rooster tail for you to use on the small mouth bass. I am not much of a smallie fisherman.
Ben
Play Ball!!!
1. Inline spinners, generally Blue Fox, Silver with white skirt. These can be fished at different depths. I also have good luck with them fishing so that they ripple on the surface.
2. Roadrunners or other small jigs. When the fishing is slow, casting and letting them bump on the bottom.
3. Floating Rapala....3-4"
4. Spinnerbait, two blades, generally white but sometimes green or yellow if the water is stained. If there is anything feeling aggressive out there, they will usually hit one of these.
With the exception of the spinnerbait, the first three will generally work on Trout also.
Good luck, I hope you catch a stringer full...
Guns only have two enemies: Rust and Liberals....
I use a light rod and any kind of medium sized spinner
and you can't keep the smallmouths off the line.
One after another for hours except they're all small
10-12" but still a blast. I use 6lb ot 8lb test.
"transplanted Pembroke boy,itching to go back"
actually a 12"'er is not too common.
I think the best lure that will work anywhere in maine on trout is the Daredevil. Brook trout, lake trout, they go crazy for anything red. One of the best wet flies will be the Parmachinee Belle, again red and white, or a Micky Finn with a red streamer/ribbon
Ben
Play Ball!!!
remember, if using mosquito repellant not to get it on your bait or hooks.
Ben
Play Ball!!!
Dont get it on the monofilament line either!
I ain't no Charlie Moore but I don't use much caution
when it comes to bait and bug spray and I do pretty good,
of course maybe the fish I do catch aren't too fussy.
The more serious I was, the bigger the trout and landlocked salmon.
Never had much luck in lakes during summer but worked streams and rivers. Those that did, trolled deep with wire lines during hours you want to be sleeping.
Don't have expections if you go at it casually.
Mid summer isn't the best time for trout and salmon. Ice-out in May is.
Common Sense is an Uncommon Virtue.
Unless you are after landlocked salmon or going deep for lake trout, 4 to 6 pound test will do all you need. Some of the smaller trout species will produce some lunkers, but your odds of catching one fishing "casually" are damned low. I rarely try for smallmouth, but when I do, I've had good luck with minnow and crayfish imitations. Interestingly, I had a neighbor who had excellent luck with dry flies at dusk along the lake shores, but she was quite the angler, as well.
Someone else pointed out that the "watch for moose" warnings along the roads are serious. They are. We have a lot of moose in the north woods now. They are dumber than Ed Rendell and will total anything short of an M1A if hit. Fun to watch feeding in shallow water along the shore or in the marshes, though.
Last, but not least - welcome to God's country and enjoy your stay!
"There is nothing lower than the human race - except the french." (Mark Twain)
I haven't fished in Maine for almost twenty years, I'd rather talk fishing than mose attacks. I have fond memories of my years fishing the land where lakes are named by Indians and hard to pronounce. You can tell where someone is from by whether or not he can pronounce Passamaqouddyum.
I met a number of native new england fisherman that use some interesting techniques that seem unique to Maine and New Hampshire. These were usually old guys who use fly rods but not dry fly fishing techniques.
The old guys would swear by using a fin from a trout as a lure. these old guys will trim all the fins off of trout and save them for future use as lure, I guess you could call it bait. Several used a bright gold hook along with dried pice of trout fin.
These old guys always caught brook troot on this bait. Usually by letting the line drift down current. They would use fly rods, but wouldnt use traditional fly fishing techniques. The same guys would often use a worm on the end of a fly rod/line rig, something which seemed blasphemous to me as a "purist" fly fisherman. They would let the worm drift down a small stream for a hundred yards.
I saw enough of these old guys fishing and catching fish like this to make me believe that at one time, maybe a hundred years ago, it was probably accepted as the correct way to fish for trout in small new england streams.
I also like the Mepps spinner with the tiny rubber trout just above the treble hook. It's those treble hooks that make these lures so easy to lose, but they work real well snagging fish too.
"There is nothing lower than the human race - except the french." (Mark Twain)
This is why they have canoes. Just paddle quietly around the edge of the lake after sunset and watch the trout starting to rise. Usually they will start rising in a linear pattern and you can predit where they will rise next...that's where you want to drop your #24 mosquito.
In the daytime you can canoe around the lake looking for sand bars and downed trees that make good cover and find bass and trout, sometimes giant pike or muskies that will swallow your lure slice your steel leader and almost swamp your canoe when they start thrashing around.
If you want to fish out in the middle of the lake, its a real pain. You have to set up trolling rigs going down a hundred feet or sometimes a lot more cause a lot of lakes are real deep and the lake trout live in the deep cold water. Some guys use lead core lines and exotic shiny rigs with baitfish or lures
Hugh, where salzo asked about line test in the context of "very casual" fishing rather than patterns, I figured the fine details of presenting tiny dry flies were probably not on the radar - nor those involving deep water trolling in glacial lakes. Not disputing what you say, by any means, because you are correct.
"There is nothing lower than the human race - except the french." (Mark Twain)
Stud mill road and wearing one of those netted up hats.
The black flies would somehow crawl up inside and bite the hell
out of you.Had to keep taking the net off to get
rid of the bugs trapped inside.We tried tightening the draw string until we damn near choked ourselves.We used so much bug
spray we got kind of sick. It was miserable.
Get a 6' med rod
say 8-10lb line ,Fish the creek mouths
with spinners and tube baits
soak some cut fish for cats
at night
The place we stayed at was out of this world. What I saw of maine was truly amazing. I stopped off at Kittery trading post on the way up. I could have stayed there for ten hours.
Turns out my wife bought me a fishing pole for our anniversary-it worked well. I used several diferent spinners(including "mepps"), and used these scented frog looking things. I caought a lot of fish, AND THEY WERE ALL LARGE MOUTH Bass. Everyone told me that small mouth would be the fish I catch, I guess they stock the lake. Most of them were small, but I caught a few legal ones also.
My 10 year old niece got a bass., and my two year old daughter caught one on her pink barbie fishing pole(I had to help her reel it in).
I lost a bunch of lures on the rocks-I guess you pro fishermen types got a way of avoiding losing your lures-not me. But I used the rowboat quite a bit, which worked well casue when a lure got stuck, I just reeled myself and the boat to the lure.
Didnt see any moose- we were going to go on a guided trip, but no one was into getting up at 430 in the am-saw a few deer and lots of road kill porcupine.
Went into the woods quite a bit, lot of them. I cant believe how thick it is-I cant imagine how Maine hunters cope with that stuff-so many pines. Also saw quite a few bald eagles fly right over our cabin, and saw porpoises, seals, and a few whales while in St. Andrews in Canada.
Man what a trip. What the hell am I doing in Pennsylvania???
"Waiting tables is what you know, making cheese is what I know-lets stick with what we know!"
-Jimmy the cheese man
across from burnt island and puts chicken legs
on a fashioned podium and the bald eagles
swoop down and grab 'em.
What the hell am I doing in Pennsylvania???
Shhhh . . . northern New England is supposed to be classified "Top Secret" so it will stay that way!
"There is nothing lower than the human race - except the french." (Mark Twain)