The Grand Lake Day Out: Shore Lunch

If I’m not keeping up with the fishing reports, it’s because I’m fishing. (No, I don’t feel bad about it.) And while the fishing is slowing a bit, the stream of experiences hasn’t.

A fleet of Grand Lakers wait while eat our shore lunch.

Saturday was a Big Day Out for the family members that were piling up at the camp like cordwood. Traditionally, the L&T Nancy’s mother (Judy) hires a couple of guides, we pile everyone into the guides’ Grand Lake Canoes, and off we go.

Ostensibly it’s a fishing trip, though most of the participants fish only once or twice a year. Quickly it becomes clear; we’re out for a day on the water, and the Main Event is the big shore lunch — a tradition among guides in these parts.

At 12:30, the small flotilla of Grand Lake canoes buzzes into the lunch spot, and the guides start a big fire, piling on the wood. From worn canvas duffle bags they pull blackened pots, filling them with lake water and stuffing them with potatoes or onions.

Coffee is made (strong!) in a soot-streaked pot, and steaks are squeezed into wire racks and stacked alongside the fire. I keep eyeing the round wicker basket that contains the fresh blackberry pie, but the L&T Nancy’s clearly onto me, and I never get a chance to swoop in and sneak a piece.

The Grand Lake shore lunch: steaks, potatoes, onions & corn.

The guides are so practiced at this — unlike most fly fishing trips out west, the shore lunch is part and parcel of the local fishing trip — that you don’t even try to help. You’d just get in the way.

Later — after I’ve stuffed myself with steak, buttered onions, potatoes, corn and bread (freshly baked at a house just down the road from the camp) — the pie makes an Officially Approved appearance, and I finally get my slice, which is heavenly.

The pots go back into the duffle bags, and suddenly, we’re pushing off the beach and fishing again.

While the day started cloudy, the clouds break during lunch and the wind starts blowing. It’s a high pressure front, which slows the fishing and makes the trip downlake a long one.

The Grand Lake Canoes handle the swells without a problem, our guide gently nosing us up one side of the swell and surfing down the other.

It’s possible I’m in the grips of a full blown love affair with these wooden, 20-foot canoes. Two anglers can fish standing up yet the things maneuver nimbly and without hesitation.

The guides are proud of their boats, and when you ask them about their boats, they reveal the maker’s name and the year it was built with a certain reverence. They don’t strut their boats like collectors at a weekend hot-rod gathering, though they can tell you at a glance who built the Grand Lake Canoe speeding by.

This from a heavily used, 26 year-old Grand Laker by Kenneth Wheaton.

Unlike car collectors, their boats aren’t garage queens, but hard-working tools bearing the marks of a blue collar existence. Scarred wood and scuffed varnish speak not to a pampered life in a garage, but daily exposure to sun, water, fish and fishermen.

Dave Irving — my guide for the day — tells me his boat was built in 1981 by Kenny Wheaton, and it’s clearly been fished hard in the last 26 years, yet will likely fish another 26 more.

Dave Irving, Registered Maine Guide

Another guide tells me his Grand Lake Canoe was built by Sonny Sprague in 1991, and that he received it was a graduation present. I suppose a trip to Europe would have gotten him more girls, but a Grand Lake Canoe is going to get him more fish.

See you on the lake, Tom Chandler.

[tags]fly fishing, fishing, grand lake stream, grand lake canoe, maine[/tags]