TR: Utterly Exhausting Andy Drift (and it hurts so good ;-)

After spending Friday night at the Poland, Maine camp of a coworker along with
one of his friends (and now one of mine), we drifted the Androscoggin
"Dixfield" stretch on Saturday, me in my wee 12' Katahdin, and they in their
16' canoe. As the river had been running at high-tide the previous week we'd
been eyeing the on-line USGS river flow out of the Rumford dam and it was
finally approaching historic norms for the week. So far so good.

What with the hangovers and slow start, we didn't get on the river until close
to 11AM. The day was already hot and sticky with air temps approaching 90, and
with the Great Ball In The Sky nearly straight up there was little shade to be
found along the banks.

I used my 9/7 fly rod and a pair of poppers - the same chartreuse and "frog"
color poppers I'd had so much success with the last time here. My friends
primarily used spinning gear to avoid hooking each other, and used both
surface and diving plugs.

The upper half of the drift fished "numerically" much slower than our
(admittedly modest) experience (this was my 4th drift on this section). Though
some heavy smallies were taken up there, we figured it was "about half" of
usual, and when met up with another canoe the occupants offered the same
estimation.

After our break at the traditional lunching spot (a large granite outcropping)
things picked up *dramatically* on the lower half of the drift. We simply
hammered big smallies - or rather, as I sit here nursing a seriously over-used
right arm - big smallies hammered us. These fish averaged 16 to 18 inches, and
we all caught heavy fish up to 20-22 inches, which are beastly river smallies
in these parts and real bruisers on a 7 weight fly rod or light spinning
tackle when they catch the current against their broad sides.

Every rock pile was blessed with a couple or few beasts, there were fish lined
up along the banks, and at times all three of us had fish on the line. While
we tended to work the obvious structure, just to prove a point - that in fact
the river was loaded from bank to bank - I fished the featureless dead center
of the river, working a popper through three casts, and on the third hooked up
with another chunky smallie.

There were so many fish to play with that we'd anchor up, clean up everything
within fishy ear-shot, then drift less than 100 feet and anchor up again. If
we thought we missed anything, we'd paddle back upstream and cover another
part of the river, which in this stretch is roughly 80 to 100 yards wide. We
were constantly hooked-up all the way down to the take-out, where I hooked and
boated two of the biggest smallies I've ever caught, back to back, each better
than 20 inches, both making me work for any line. When the second was finally
released as dusk approached my arm was thoroughly beaten and screaming "No
mas!" and as the rest of me was dried and fried and totally spent, I
capitulated and called it a day.

Eagle update: one of the youngster eagles we'd seen a few weeks ago was
standing on a rock pile in the middle of the river with Mom or Dad Eagle. The
baby was screaming for food, and the parent appeared to be doing its best to
ignore Baby. With the two birds easily visible in their entirety we realized
the youngster was every bit as big as the parent. Huge.

As we drifted closer the parent bailed leaving Baby behind. We came within 100
feet of Baby before he/she flew up into a large pine a bit further down
stream. I eventually fished my way to where I was right next to that pine,
with Baby 50 feet above me, close enough for me to see every feather and
marking. Awesome. I would have liked to have left a dead chub for it, but
fishing large poppers I didn't catch a single chub on this drift. No doubt the
parents will succeed in teaching their youngsters how to feed themselves, but
right now they have a couple of brats on their wings ;-)

/daytripper (today, the poster child for Advil...)

daytripper wrote in
:

After spending Friday night at the Poland, Maine camp of a coworker
along with one of his friends (and now one of mine), we drifted the
Androscoggin "Dixfield" stretch on Saturday, me in my wee 12'
Katahdin, and they in their 16' canoe.

fekker

Fly

daytripper wrote in
:

damn fine TR tripper, I'm planning on coming up sometime in Sept and doing
one more float with Flyfish (if he's up to it) :-) I'm chomping at the bit
already.

Frank the elder