As a young man, I read Hemingway and Steinbeck, Harrison and McGuane. Along the way, the fly-fishing raconteur Richard Brautigan brought tears to my eyes while the rabid environmentalist Edward Abbey had me raising my fists in outrage.
I took to heart the words of Gary Snyder, the acclaimed poet turned Buddhist, found in his thought-provoking book, “Practice of the Wild”:
“The wild requires… we learn the terrain, nod to all the plants and animals and birds, ford the streams and cross the ridges, and tell a good story when we get back home.”
Over the years, I’ve tried to follow his advice, attempting from time to time to tell a good story when returning home from the Rangeley Lakes Region of western Maine. My wife and I have owned a camp there for more than 40 years.
This part of the Pine Tree State has not changed much. Logging roads have replaced some river routes that once carried timber to mills across the New Hampshire border. Grand hotels catering to wealthy sports may be gone. But the rivers, streams and ponds surrounding our cabin are much the same as Johnny Danforth and Fred Baker found them when they spent the winter of 1876 hunting and trapping above Parmachenee Lake.
This region is known for its brook trout, fish that have called these waters home since glaciers receded more than 10,000 years ago. They are not as large as they once were, but a 16-inch native brook trout is not uncommon and certain to make an angler’s heart flutter. Landlocked salmon, introduced in the late 1800s, are now as wild as the moose that sometimes plod down to the shoreline to muse over the mysteries of the conifer forest.
A six-inch brook trout rests in the author’s hand, one of the small but prized fish of western Maine’s hidden streams. Trish Romano
The author’s small pocket-sized tin holds a carefully chosen selection of flies. Trish Romano
A river otter pauses along a hidden western Maine stream, one of the quiet creatures that share the author’s fly-fishing sanctuary. Trish Romano
When Trish and I first arrived, I cast large streamers and weighted nymphs in a manic pursuit for ever-larger fish. I wore a vest with more fly boxes than Samuel Carter had little liver pills. My pack was heavy with reels spooled with lines that sank at different rates, along with extra clothing for northern New England’s constantly changing weather.
Such angling requires time on the water, especially after the spring thaw, which in western Maine may not begin until mid-May.
This is when ice leaves the lakes and smelts, the region’s principal bait fish, enter the big rivers to spawn, with brook trout and landlocked salmon following closely behind.
By late September, trout and salmon swim up rivers like the Magalloway, Kennebago, Cupsuptic and Rapid on their own spawning runs. This provides a second opportunity to take fish measured in pounds rather than inches.
I have fished in rain and sleet, under snow squalls and blistering sun. I was buffeted by wind and harassed by black flies, mosquitoes and no-see-ums. Rapids threatened to take me under, and storms sent the occasional lightning bolt my way. All while I stripped streamers across dark pools and bounced nymphs over river bottoms from first light until after dark. I am addicted to the tug of fish measured in pounds rather than inches.
As the years passed, I discovered another type of fishing, one found on the many tannin-stained brooks that slip across the Canadian border. These streams twist through balsam and spruce for mile after mile. Some have no names, others form the headwaters of larger rivers where most anglers continue their search for trophy fish.
Along these secret rills, I have learned to enjoy casting my flies to brook trout far smaller than those in the big rivers. A few are no longer than a finger, the largest fitting in the palm of a hand. In these narrow ribbons of water, hidden under shadows cast by a vast conifer forest, I have come to appreciate what Thoreau described as “…these jewels…these bright fluviatile flowers, made beautiful, the Lord only knows why, to swim there.”
Now, on the losing side of middle age, I seek waters too small to gather attention from other anglers — forgotten places where trout live under boulders, in shadows cast by conifer branches, along undercut banks, or hiding in plain sight in sunlit riffles. These are fish that have rarely heard a wading boot or the splash of an artificial fly.
This type of fishing requires an angler to heed the words of the legendary American naturalist John Muir, who wrote, “Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness.”
No longer do I feel compelled to wing heavy flies past my ear or make 60-foot casts until my shoulder aches. I carry a single metal tin that fits in the pocket of my canvas shirt. Once holding cough drops, it now holds a handful of flies: pheasant-tail dry flies, patterns with parachute wings for casting upstream, a few elk hair caddis or black ants for summer and fixed-winged and soft-hackled hare’s ear wet flies for when I work downstream.
I leave my 8-foot fly rod constructed of space-age material at the cabin. Instead, I carry a 6-foot-6-inch rod, made of cane the color of maple syrup, the good stuff produced at the end of the season and once classified as grade B. I could never afford such a rod but bought this one secondhand. The cork base is stained from its prior owner.
Seated on a lichen-covered boulder or fallen tree trunk, I sometimes wonder who might cast this little bit of fishing history after my time on this whirling orb ends.
When a 6-inch brook trout splashes through the surface, my mind is free to be in the moment. With less distraction, I enjoy the creatures along the edges of running water — the mink slinking around boulders on the opposite bank or the beaver slapping its tail so loud it sounds like a shotgun echo.
Sometimes it is simply the flash of a tiny warbler or the song of a secretive thrush. I catch myself smiling at the splash of a frog or staring into the eyes of a bashful toad no larger than a button.
Seated by the wood stove on a November evening, a mug of tea warm against my palms, the sound of hail pinging against the windows as it mixes with damp snow, I can retrieve these moments that, like a Basho haiku, remain frozen in time.
Tramping through western Maine’s fields and forest, casting a fly while kneeling on a mossy bank, holding my breath in anticipation of a rising fish, I escape the madding pace of modern life.
As long as my legs allow, I will tread that trail less traveled — the one alongside a stream where brook trout play tag with a bit of feather and fur — and return to tell a tale or two.
