I really love Maine. It’s so great to get done with work for the day and be casting to brookies, browns and Salmon in a stream right down the road from my house. Better yet, tomorrow I may be casting to salt water fish like Striped Bass. It’s even closer and all I gotta do is go the other direction. Today was great. I was toying with the idea of heading up north for a few casts, but then I just said forget it. I was tired of traveling and the fish are here too. You just gotta know where to find them. So that’s what I did. I found a little stream that had not been producing many fish before I went to to Florida, but boy things changed when I got back. Brookies and Browns were everwhere. However when I say everywhere, it does not mean all throughout the river. When stream fishing in Maine, I have found that one hole or run may look good but there might not be any fish. Who knows why, that’s just the way it is. So, never judge a river or stream by one or a couple holes or runs. Sometimes it takes me a while to find the fish. I will cast into several different holes and runs and nothing will happen. I keep moving. 10 casts maximum in any given spot. If I don’t see any action, I move on. It is useless to stand there and hope that something will happen because if there is one thing for certain it is this. If there ain’t any fish in the hole you will not catch a thing. So I move. I try different flies and I try different waters. Maybe the fish are in the shallower water, maybe in the pools, maybe in the front of the pools or maybe in the back of the pools. I try it all until I find a combination of things that work. Fly, location and retrieve. Once I dial into these 3 things I start catching fish and lots of them. Today was fun. Fished for about an hour and got a bunch. I found them in the pocket waters and they loved olive wooly buggers. They wanted nothing to do with dry flies, nymphs or streamers. I tied on alot of leader and a beadhead olive wooly. I would cast a little upstream or directly accross stream. I would let it sink for a little bit and just when the fly reached the end of the drift I would lift up my rod in one steady motion. That is when I caught the fish. They really liked the fly when it was making a vertical and partially upstream motion. I tricked them time and time again. A fun and relaxing end to another day. It’s good to be home.
