TR: Big River, Big Smallies, Great Friends

Old friend Flyfish had been taunting me with taking his matched pair of Water
Skeeter pontoon boats on a float trip, so even though the weather forecast was
not encouraging, the choice between working on the yard this weekend or
joining Dave on a smallmouth float on the Androscoggin took little effort to
make. As soon as I could pry myself out of the office I was off and running
north to Mechanics Fall, Maine, meeting Dave with enough time to enjoy T3 on
his big screen/multichannel sound system (Ahhnold didn't leave any special
effects money on the table, that's for sure).

Saturday morning in a steady drizzle we dropped my truck at the take out and
settled in at a carry-in boat launch on the Androscoggin River just southeast
of Peru, constructing a pair of pontoon boatletts as we got increasingly
"damp". It's a nightmare of "Tab A into Slot B" proportions, but after only a
couple of errant moves we got the two critters together and launched around
11AM.

The boats proved incredibly stable, capable and comfortable, if not
particularly speedy. We'd be in them for almost 9 hours but I felt just fine
afterwards. The weather continued to spit on and off all day, but between
waders and rain jackets we were no wetter than we were when we started ;-)
With all the oars, pontoons, seat, etc, there are all kinds of things to eff
up your casting, but eventually I got the drill sorted out and was able to let
fly at pretty much any distance I needed...

....Which wasn't a whole lot: my second cast brought a nice smallie to the
long-handled net that Dave had thoughtfully included on his list of "gotta
haves".

From there we had a blast drifting along within a short cast of the river
bank, picking up smallie after smallie by casting right to the bank and then
slowly stripping the fly back. Both of us were fishing various Clousers that
Dave (the perfect host) had tied up, chartreuse/white, white/brown,
white/black, chartreuse/yellow.

They all worked - these fish were stationed in thin water at bankside and were
looking to hammer anything in their sight - and holy smoke could they pull out
line! I was fishing my rehabilitated 9/5 Winston and frequently had the rod
bent well into the grip, trying not to lose advantage to a fat Greenie.

The largest we caught was 19 inches, with a massive girth. I got one and Dave
might have got one. Most of what we caught were between 16 and 18 inches - all
of them well fed. Many threw in two or three jumps, and we long-line released
a bunch on top of what we netted and released. For sure we both realized this
river has much larger fish than these - I can't even imagine what a solid two
foot smallmouth much look like but no doubt it's impressive ;-)

Dave pried himself from a spot where he'd been hitting fish after fish, and we
took a break for lunch on huge smooth rock from where I'd hammered up five
nice fish on the same chartreuse/yellow Clouser. After lunch we sized up where
we were and what time it was, and we realized we were running late and better
get moving again.

In between all the fat smallmouth, we were blessed by the frequent appearance
of sizable chubs. Dave proclaimed himself ChubMaster for all the HUGE
chub/fallfish/shiners/whatever_these_scaly_things_might_be (we're talking 14
inch monsters, all colored up for God only knows what sordid things chubs do
among themselves). They were hitting his fly deep, middle, and on top - those
chubs really wanted Dave's fly in the worst way ;-)

As the afternoon turned to evening we discovered our take out at Canton Point
was about two miles too far downstream. Unfortunately there wasn't any better
place to take out - the river bank upstream was almost vertical and at least a
15 foot drop to the water, and we had these 70 pound beasts to haul out.

Those last couple of miles were exclusively Chub Water, so we rowed along for
the last hour, putting along at about 2 mph (these things are not anything
like gliding along in a canoe - every foot of progress is earned) but we
hauled out of the water just before dark.

I gotta say, I had a blast. I've never fished a *river* with that high a
population of large smallmouth, and being river fish these guys fought hard.
Dave did a great job of picking the drift, outfitting his small boats, plus he
ties a mean Clouser ;-)

Knowing Dave he's geared up and waiting for folks to visit and take him
fishing. If you have the chance, do it - you'll have a day to remember for
sure...

/daytripper (still can't believe smallies get that big!)