Nice report Myron!

Too bad about the diversion North; however, it sounds like you still had a
great time.

Think NC, when you retire.

Op

"riverman" wrote in message
ups.com...
A couple of nice seredipitous events resulted in my being teased by the
ever-famous Rapid River this week.

For the past few weeks, I was driving a rental car (a rather funky
Chevy HHR: their version of the Plymouth PT Cruiser) and the dash light
kept telling me that it was time to change the oil. I took it back to
the rental counter at the Portland Jetport, and told them that they
might want to address the oil change as I was going to be keeping it
for another 4 weeks. They said that they weren't doing oil changes that
day, so they'd have to do a vehicle exchange. The man said that people
were avoiding renting SUVs as they were concerned with the price of gas
($3 per gallon, which was about half of what I've been paying for the
past decade), so I'd be doing him a big favor if I would accept a
brand-new high clearance, 4WD Chevy TrailBlazer at the same price as
the Economy car I had rented...along with a full tank of gas. So I
debated for a millisecond and accepted.

The second event was that I had been at LLBeans a few nights before
looking at GPS units. I have had a couple of occasions to make use of
one, and it seemed like there were some cases where it might be handier
than a map and compass, something I am very adept with and prefer to
use, but there are some features on a GPS that are superior to
compasses, so I was considering getting one. However, the abundant
choices and differences had me stymied, so I did not pick one up. My
friend in Wilton had one that he liked, so he offered to loan it to me
so I could check it out.

So I found myself in the western Maine region, with a good quality SUV,
free time, a GPS unit, my canoe, and my fishing and camping gear. I
decided to see what the Rapid River is all about.

According to the Maine Gazeteer, the Rapid is rather difficult to get
to. The usual ingress is through Lakewood Camps, where you drive to
South Arm and call them, and they send a boat across Lower Richardson
Lake to fetch you. However, I did not really want to spend so much
money to stay at the camps, having my tent and gear with me, and I
wasn't sure they had space anyway. The second possible ingress would be
to drive down the logging roads from the north, however this involved
going through three separate gates whose status was unknown, as well as
making about a half-dozen turns on the mazelike road network, without a
good map. It seemed likely that I would get lost or find myself locked
out and 20 miles from the river.

The third option involved driving in from the south along another maze
of logging roads, but only one gate at the start, and hiking a half
mile through the woods. I found a website where some river runners had
posted the GPS coordinates of all the intersections and the mileage
markers for the roads, so I decided to go that way.

The next morning I headed up. The gate was open, GPS coordinates were
perfect, and I easily found my way to the logging road that ran along
the south side of the river. Finding a reasonable parking spot, I
grabbed my fishing gear, marked a waypoint so I could find the truck
again, and bushwacked into the woods. Before long, I found the traces
of a trail, and followed it right to the river.

I emerged right at Lower Dam, and the river looked and smelled VERY
fishable. The water was fairly low, with current between each of the 5
rockpiles that had been the footing of the dam, and about half the
total current going between the two closest pilings on my side. I
rigged up my 4wt and gingerly waded out to the middle piling where I
could have a good backcast. I could see smaller fish all along the
shoreline, and a dozen or more 6-8 inchers in the eddy line below the
rockpile. The wading was pretty easy, but the rocks were roundish and a
bit slippery, and there were occasional pools that were too deep to
walk through. But I made it to the rock cairn fine.

I tried a variety of flies; some dries, parachutes, streamers and
copper johns. The tiny and small fish were very cooperative, but
nothing spectactular was hitting on anything I offered. Finally, I had
a pretty good strike on (what else) a Grey Ghost, but that wasn't
repeated.

As the water was only about waist deep at the most, and usually about
mid-thigh deep, I considered wading across to the North side and
fishing the length of the river along the Carry Road, as I know is
common, but I decided not to. I was alone and my car was quite far in
the woods, and I did not want to fall and lose any gear or get swept
through the remnants of the dam, and I did not have any food, and none
of my gear was waterproofed, so I chickened out. Instead, I waded back
and hiked along the south shore downstream to the next pool, where I
caught and released about 10 fish ranging from 6-inches to a foot, and
pretty much enjoyed the hell out of myself. By then, the day was
getting on and I needed to head back to the truck to find a campsite
for the night, so I took a quick swim (intentional), packed my gear,
and used the GPS to bushwack back toward the truck. I intercepted a
very clear trail almost immediately, and followed that out to the road
a few dozen feet from where I was parked.

I saw that there were some camps at the narrows of Richardson Lake just
north of South Arm, so I drove a logging road the 4 miles along the
south side of the lake until I got there. Unfortunately, there was no
access to these camps from the land, so in desperation, I paid the $26
to pitch my tent at the overcrowded campground at South Arm, and
planned on preparing more carefully and spending the next day in its
entirety at the Rapid. I know there are some really large fish there,
so I planned on packing for a full day and making the most of it.

The next morning, I packed some sandwiches and water, waterproofed the
gear that could not get immersed, found a nice stick for a wading
staff, prepped my floating line with slickem and floatant, and rigged a
reel with a sinktip for some streamers. I packed both my travel rods,
sorted my flies, lubed up with bugdope, and prepared to spend the day
exploring the river. I headed out of the campsite, and back along the 4
mile dirt road back to the trailhead, and immediately met up with a
backhoe that had dug a 4-foot trench across the road to install a
culvert!! The way back was closed, and I couldn't get back to the
river!!

The only routes back were a) drive back down to Upton, across a dirt
road, and back North along the road I had initially come in on the day
before. b) Load my gear into my canoe and paddle the 5 miles across
Lower Richardson to Upper Dam, then hike along the shore for another
few miles, or c) Drive on dirt roads until I got the to pavement, and
go along the North shore to Upper Dam, and try to get in from there.

Although the first choice would have been the easiest, and would only
have taken about 2 hours, the day was getting on and it looked like I
was going to be stuck with the same short window of time I had the day
before, which meant not enough time to get beyond what I had already
fished, so I decided to abandon the Rapid, drive around the north, and
hike in to Upper Dam to see the famous location where Carrie Stevens
invented the Grey Ghost. So it turned out that my few hours the day
before was my short, but wonderful introduction to the Rapid River. But
now that I know the way in, I might make one more full-day adventure of
getting in there before I leave this summer.

--riverman