Category: Mike’s Blog

Summer is kicking into high gear and everyone is out enjoying the beautiful weather and perfect swimming conditions.   It’s so much fun to see the lakes being enjoyed by everyone from jet skiers to water-skiers to sunbathers sitting on the ends of their docks.  All this sunshine brings out the best in people too and we’ve had some wonderful conversations with folks as we fish by their cottages;  the traditional “great weather eh?” and “how are they biting” along with stories of moose swimming across Great Pond’s Austin Bog and aggressive beavers chewing down newly planted apple trees.    This is what summer in the Belgrades is all about.

Last Monday I got up way too early.  In my opinion there’s no reason to get up at 4:30 a.m. unless you make donuts for a living or are a fishing guide.  But getting up early does have its advantages and I enjoy the quiet time and the sunrises.
While sitting on the porch sipping a coffee, the laptop was tuned into CNN.com.   I was scanning over the latest
world news and reading about our countries deficit problem.   It’s not the most energizing way to start
the day, but I knew there were blue skies and crystal waters (along with a rock pile full of chunky smallmouth bass) waiting for us.   After picking up Dick Dempster and his two son-in-laws Michael and Gentry, we headed out to the lake.  We came across a young kid in nice a 14-foot aluminum boat with a 9.9 motor.  It looked like one of Craig Poolers rental boats over at Belgrade Boat Rentals.   The kid was probably 14, lean and tan wearing a pair of shorts and a ball cap.   My brain raced back in time, back to a day when I lived for a week’s vacation on the lake.   Back to that first time, when I was finally old enough to take the boat out fishing by myself.  All of a sudden national economic crisis, property taxes and worries about tuition payments vanished and all that mattered was that kid and that rock pile about a mile up lake.  That’s what fishing does to people, that’s what fishing is.  It’s not a quest to see who catches the biggest fish or the most fish, those things take care of themselves.  It’s a reason to get up way too early and an excuse to push away the quandary of the day and focus on what’s right in front of your eyes . . . its good livin’.

However, to really enjoy fishing we need to catch some fish and the last week has been a period of ups and downs.   When the fishing has been hot, it’s been amazingly hot and when it turned off, you might as well go eat one of those donuts.    The key has been getting the fish active and keeping the bite alive for as long as possible, especially as the sun gets higher in the sky.   Live
bait has certainly been helpful to catching mid day fish but you can keep the bite going with artificial baits too.  Early in the morning and late in the day, top water lures have been excellent ( the Rapala X-Rap Walk and the Zara Spook have been working great) with tubes and senkos catching smallies in 10 – 15 feet of water along with the occasional northern pike.  As a bonus, lots of people have reported catching big white perch off their docks on earthworms.    This is definitely an added summer bonus and Maine white perch is the key ingredient to the best chowder anywhere in world!    Good luck
this week!

During the hotter months when the lake weeds are at their thickest, one fun way to catch largemouth bass is by throwing a frog imitating bait into thick cover. Frogs are ideal when fishing heavy cover because they are made to float over the top and go through the thick stuff with relative ease. They are also a blast to fish so they offer a great change of pace from rubber worms and jigs. There’s a lot of different frogs on the market these days ranging from the Scum Frog too the new Spro series. They come in a wide range of colors and sizes, but personally I like to use traditional patterns of green or black. Personally, I’ve never seen a florescent orange or bright purple frog in the lake but I’m sure somewhere an angler swears by his lucky hot pink frog. I don’t even know if I want to catch a bass that would eat a hot pink frog, but to each his own!

There’s a variety of fishing tactics for frog fishing and fishermen can experiment with various retrieves too. For example in August we like to occasionally throw a buzz bait around heavy weeds and burn the lure over the heads of the bass to get a reaction strike. Sometimes this tactic will catch truly huge fish. You can fish a frog the same way. When swimming frogs quickly I like to use the 4-inch Zoom Horny Toad. The legs on this frog really kick up a wake that drives big bass crazy. When fishing slower I like the 2 ½ inch Spro Frog Jr in leopard color (green/black). One thing that will help anglers up the odds of hooking into a big largemouth on a fake frog is to use a heavier braided line and a rather stout rod. I use a 7 foot medium action bait caster loaded with 60 pound power pro for my frog fishing, however you can fish frogs on a spinning outfit. Sometimes it’s easier to “skip” the frog under docks or trees with a spinning rod too. The braided line doesn’t have any stretch so when the bass takes the frog under, the angler should hesitate for a second or two and then set the hook very hard. Setting the hook too early will result in your frog flying over the boat without a bass attached to the hook. Lastly, the braid cuts through the weeds better so it makes it easier to haul your trophy out of matted grass. One word of warning though, northern pike love to hit these frogs and they have a tendency to bite you off. The braided line will help a little bit, but at $9 or $10 a frog it can get expensive!

In last weeks article I wrote about how we’ve been diving the lakes quite a bit this summer and checking out what the fish are up to. Well, I have a story from this week that I found interesting. Basically, we were free diving the shallows picking crayfish. I had two identical white buckets with holes poked in the lid to store the crayfish as we caught them. In one bucket we had about 30 crayfish and the other bucket was empty. I tied the buckets to the end of the dock and sank them to the bottom. Within minutes up to 9 smallmouth bass were swimming around the bucket that had the crayfish and not one bass was near the empty bucket. The bass couldn’t see inside the pails, so they either could smell the crayfish or hear them clicking. Regardless, the fact of the matter is that those bass knew there was bait inside – amazing. After watching the bass for a while, I dove down and picked a small crayfish from under a nearby rock. I swam over toward the bucket, held the crayfish out in my fingers and a smallmouth about 14 inches long come over and ate the crayfish right out of my hand. It was one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had. Next week we’re going to try filming it with my underwater camera. If everything works out, I’ll post the video and put the link in this article. Good luck fishing this week!

As I sit out on the back deck listening to the world wake up, Iâ??m enthralled by the sounds of nature. Belgrade woke up suddenly this morning, as if my teenager flipped the switch on her stereo, blasting a modern day tune filled with multiple beats that simply donâ??t jive in my head, but somehow have a harmony to them. A symphony of sounds that really shouldnâ??t go together but strangely make beautiful music. The dawn concert started with my favorite sound of the season, a tom turkey gobbling as he flew from his roost. Heâ??s about 500 yards away or so, making that guttural noise that causes my heart to pound every time I hear that sweet gobble. . . .gobble. . . . gobble. Heâ??s searching for his lady friends, wondering where they flew to and trying to keep them close at hand (or in this case wing). This is common spring behavior for a turkey and he will gobble to stir up his girlfriends or he will holler when he hears an owl or crow. Only this morning heâ??s gobbling Belgrade style; heâ??s gobbling each time the loon out front wails. Iâ??ve been turkey hunting most of my adult life and have a pretty good understanding of how the game is played, but in all the places Iâ??ve hunted, never have I heard a turkey get so angry at a loon! So now the band consists of two of the larger birds found here in the area and they are really setting the tone for the morning concert. There are also a couple of crows cackling and a hummingbird is feeding only a few feet from me. Hummingbirds really are beautiful, so sleek and fine tuned with just a hint of red highlighted on his neck. Donâ??t you wish you had a hummingbirdâ??s metabolism rate? Just for one day?
So now there are more bird noises than I can pinpoint and my little piece of heaven is really awake when I hear the motor of a fisherman trolling down the lake. Ahhh, now thatâ??s a sound I really like! Iâ??ve got to finish typing and get my fanny in my boat soon too, but thereâ??s still coffee in my cup and one last sound thatâ??s worth waiting for. It puts a smile on my face every morning. Soon the porch door will open and my favorite Belgrade dweller will emerge with â??good morning daddy.â? Thatâ??s the perfect lyric to end the morningâ??s show!
Speaking of noises, loons have four basic calls that make up their vocal communication. This information came from the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute.
â?¢ The yodel is a territorial call given by male loons. The call begins with three notes that rise slowly and are followed by several undulating phrases. It communicates to any loons in the area â??I am a male loon, Iâ??m on my territory, and Iâ??m prepared to defend it.â?
â?¢ The wail resembles a wolf howl. Individual loons use this call to locate other loons. If you listen closely, you will hear a wailing loon saying, â??where are you?â? Indeed, thatâ??s what they are asking.
â?¢ The tremolo sounds like a quavering laugh. It is typically used when loons are disturbed. A variation of the tremolo is the flight call. It is usually given over lakes and is a loonâ??s way of requesting clearance for landing. If a loon on the lake responds with a yodel, the one in the air usually flies on to the next lake.
â?¢ The hoot is a soft, one-note call loons use in close quarters to call to chicks, mates, or even other loons in a social flock. In social groups, the hoot can be thought of as the loonâ??s way of saying â??hi.â?

Now that the coffee is gone and Iâ??ve received my good morning hug and kiss, itâ??s time to go fishing! June is my favorite month to fish the local waters because there is so much variety available to anglers. Trout and salmon fishing shifts into high gear right now and some beautiful fish have been caught locally on Mooselook Wobblers and Sutton Spoons along with smelt imitating streamer flies like Jerryâ??s Smelt & Gray Ghosts. Most of the trout are still relatively high in the water column, especially at dawn or dusk, so a couple of colors of lead core line on a fly rod should get you into fish. Mooselooks come in a wide variety of sizes and colors and are a staple in every trollers tackle box. Back when I was a kid, an old time Maine Guide told me to fish â??bright when itâ??s bright and dark when itâ??s darkâ?. I can still picture Gene telling me that and what worked 60 years ago still works today. What he meant was, on sunny days, fish silver, white, chartreuse, etc and on overcast and rainy days we should fish copper, gold, green or orange. Obviously, this is just a rule of thumb, but itâ??s a rule I obey as often as possible.

If bass fishing is your gig, youâ??ll be happy to know that the smallies are making beds like crazy and aggressively protecting the nests. People often talk about â??world class fishingâ? and our bedded smallmouth bass opportunities are certainly as good as youâ??ll find anywhere! I would be remiss if I didnâ??t mention the importance of putting this fish back on the bed after you catch them. One of my favorite ways to catch bedded smallmouth is with top water lures. Sure, casting a senko or tube jig at the bed is the most efficient way to catch these fighters, but watching them crush floating baits on a calm morning is awesome. I canâ??t stand it anymore â?? time to go!

There were so many highlights from this past week that’s it hard to pick a starting point! The fishing was great, the company was even better and the weather was really pretty good too. So many memories and stories to tell, but how about starting with all the little critters running, swimming, jumping, hopping and waddling around. For example, on Thursday morning around 5 a.m. I spotted my first flock of baby turkeys. There were three mother hen turkeys and 19 chicks (give or take a few – they are hard to count, and in my defense they all look the same). The hens kept a close watch on their brood and every time I tried to get close enough to take a picture they would shepherd the little ones away. I didn’t want to harass them too much, so I left well enough alone and headed to the lake. Once on the water, I had the privilege of fishing with my good friend Marty and his wife Gwen. My New Jerseyian friends come up and stay at Whisperwood every year, and we had a blast throwing Yamamoto swimming Senkos and spinnerbaits for largemouth bass. They even caught a few on top water, which is always a thrill. While on our trip, Marty told me that he has taken up photography and moments later a mother loon with two babies on her back swam around the corner. It was fate, karma, a gift from the loon gods! When the loon first rounded the bend, she didn’t realize we were there and dove to catch some fish. The little fluff balls bobbed around and minutes later momma popped up right next to them. As soon as she saw us, the babies were back up on their feathered raft! In the blink of an eye, the mother loon lifted her wing and hid the babes under the protection of her arm. If you didn’t know the babies were there, you would never have seen them. It was a great experience. Marty did get some photos of the loon and some terrific eagle shots later in the day. The bald eagles seem to be thriving this year, and it’s rare to not see an eagle on a morning’s fishing trip. Of course the baby ducks and geese are everywhere, along with lots of small turtles. Speaking of turtles, kudos to whoever had traffic stopped the other day on Route 27 in front of Hammond Lumber Company. That stubborn snapping turtle just didn’t want to cross the road, but you helped him make the trip safely. Being hit by cars is one of the leading causes of death for snapping turtles, which can live to be over 50 years old. Plus, they lay a clutch of eggs that should be hatching in the next few weeks. Nice job!
So in addition to all the little critters there’s also a lot of baby fish swimming around this time of year. The smallmouth bass have entered their post spawn time, meaning they have begun to move off beds and spend more time in deeper water. The big females have the feed bag on now, so anglers should be able to catch some bigger fish in 10-15 feet . One observation from the past week is that the smallies are keyed on little crayfish. The crayfish are about an inch long and seem to be very abundant. If worms and minnow imitating baits are not working, try a crayfish imitating bait like a jig or crayfish colored crankbait. The sunfish (known in some places as bream) are also on their beds in the shallow weedy water and you can bet that their fry will attract the largemouth bass. Once the fry pop and start swimming around, the largemouth fishing will be excellent!
Trout fishing is in high gear right now for trollers and fly fishermen. The big mayflies are everywhere and they are drawing trout to the surface. These next few weeks offer fly fishermen a chance to catch trout on the surface on the lakes and ponds in the area. Dusk fishing seems to be the best time to catch cruising browns and brookies. If river fishing puts the wind in your sails, you might want to head up the Shawmut section of the Kennebec River. The river levels are excellent right now and wading options abound in this stretch of river. Elk hair caddis flies and green or brown drakes (big mayflies called Hexagenias) are a great option this time of year on the river, but be aware, the fish here are smart. Light tippets and proper presentation are key to catching the browns and rainbows in this area. Good Luck