This is it — the annual post that swells the heart of the Underground’s Montana Correspondent in Charge of Covert Operations (Sully).
Ladies and Gentlereaders, it’s the annual Pickerel picture:
Pickerel always look like they’re about to pull a knife on you.
Yesterday afternoon, Chris Wheaton — local guide, Grand Lake Canoe builder, Grand Lake Lodge co-owner and Trout Underground Brother-in-Law — called up and suggested a quick evening’s fishing on Big Lake — the shallower, weedier neighbor to Grand Lake.
Chris juggles a loaded guide schedule and keeps things humming around the Grand Lake Lodge’s housekeeping cabins, so I don’t fish with him as much as I’d like.
Still, even the overcommitted sometimes get parole, and it’s not as if someone who’s fished and guided on a lake for nearly five decades needs a lot of time to find the hot spots.
In the first twenty minutes, we’d already landed a 20″ pickerel, a catfish, and a handful of smallmouth bass running from 14″-17″, and Chris turned and said “well, let’s see if we can’t find some big fish.”
Oh.
Yeah. Let’s do that.
We didn’t — though the kick-your-ass-sized smallmouth kept coming — and the only downside to the evening was the planned White Perch harvest.
Last year we’d caught enough White Perch for a small fish fry, but this year we dallied on the smallmouth, hitting the White Perch Honey Hole just a little too late in the evening.
The average fly fisher doesn’t get too excited about White Perch caught on nightcrawlers, but the average fly fisher probably should get excited about minutes-old White Perch fillets battered and flash fried in very hot oil, so they’re not greasy.
In other words, my work here isn’t done.
Still to Come
Tomorrow I may have lucked my way into another monster Grand Lake shore lunch, and the L&T Nancy and I are still planning a way-uplake trip to mirror last year’s trip, where we tried to outrun a storm on its way downlake.
Also coming — a confession: the other evening I fly fished Grand Lake Stream (the river that connects Grand Lake to Big Lake), and still sorta wonder what all the noise is about. We’ll discuss it an upcoming post, where the Grand Lake Stream partisans will surely tell me I’m dead wrong.
Plus, I’m about to post Part III of Jim Troyer’s Fly Fishing Baja series. Don’t miss it.
One Final Question
I received an e-mail from Alert Underground Reader asking me how it was I took vacations to Tennessee and Maine while living the life of a chronically unemployeed writer.
More accurately, he wanted to know how he could do that.
The answer is simple: work hard, invest wisely, and save carefully marry well. See you in Maine, Tom Chandler.
[tags]fly fishing, fishing, big lake, maine, pickerel, grand lake[/tags]
Marry well-so that’s the secret. I knew I had made a mistake somewhere.
Harry(Quote)
Wow, NICE fish! I have just started fly fishing so targeting the big game fish will not happen for awhile. I’m busy trying to get my first tiny trout. :) Would love to get a Northern Pike on the end of the line (whether fly or just freshwater). Looking forward to more posts, this looks like a pretty cool blog! -Michael
Michael(Quote)
Thanks Michael. The fish with more teeth than me aren’t necessarily my favorites, but I’ll try most anything once. Thanks for stopping by!
Tom Chandler(Quote)
Many folks know that white perch are mighty tasty fish.
A few are even willing to admit that they taste even better than brook trout. Paradigm shock though it may be, it’s the truth.
What very few know is that chain pickerel are almost as tasty as white perch, as long as they’re skinned first, and filleted into fritter-sized morsels.
Also, believe it or not: many Maine lakes have huge Hexagenia hatches in the summertime, at night. It can bring all sorts of fish to the top, including huge schools of white perch that boil the water. They aren’t going after the duns on tops, though- they hold just under the surface, going after the nymphs swimming to the top.
I was in Maine in June, fishing the mill streams of the Winthrop Lakes, and the Nezinscot River. Got everything from chubs to smallies to brook trout, all on my Fenwick FF75-4.
Hadn’t been to the place in more than 30 years. Incredible. The people were cheerful, mellow, unassuming, quietly competent…the whole time, everywhere I went, it felt like the afterglow of a really, really good Grateful Dead concert.
And the Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers are running clean…a miracle I never thought I’d live to see.
freestoner(Quote)
By the way, pickerel heads look very, very cool when beheaded, and dried. But do it somewhere the raccoons won’t get to them.
( If you do that, eat the tasty parts…that should go without saying. They’re native to Maine, after all. At minimum, they deserve that much respect. )
~nature, red in tooth & claw~
freestoner(Quote)