West Grand Lake, Maine

That’s a stark contrast to my neck of the world, where everything looks raw and new, and — geologically speaking — actually is.

West Grand Lake’s water level doesn’t vary more than a foot or so over the course of the year, and granite rocks that ring the lake offer a sense of absolute permanence.

Fueling that perception are the cabins in the camp; most of the half-dozen buildings feature roots going back at least half a century and they’re decorated with the kind of “rustic kitch” you simply can’t fake (pictures cut from 1950s outdoor magazines, deer-antler coat hooks, etc).

There’s even the pennant flag from a steam-powered boat that plied the area’s lakes way back when steam-powered boats were considered high tech.

In one building I found a B&W photograph of the L&T’s remarkable mother sitting in a Grand Laker canoe and reading a magazine — somewhere around the age of eight.

The world has changed around the camp and the place is hardly frozen in time (they’ve now got running water, electricity and even wi-fi), but the atmosphere runs at a rural, turn-of-the-century pace, which can find you sitting on a rock-strewn shore, napping and tossing pebbles into the water without noticing a couple hours have passed.

Exactly the kind of thing, it seems, that could go on forever.

West Grand swimming hole...

The Fishing Report

I already related my first-cast heroics in another post, but did manage to get two full days in on the water.

This is the trip where — hearing the stream was dead — I didn’t bother with the fly fishing gear, so naturally, there were fish rising in the evenings, and few fishermen around to hound the fish.

It’s too bad (or par for the course when you rely on the Internet to shape your reality), but only a wretched ass would have regrets about catching smallies with lightweight spinning and casting gear.

My first day on the water was with Registered Maine Guide Steve Schaefer (note the caps). We fished Big Lake, and while we got hammered by one rain squall after another (Steve’s canoe-borne rain gage showed 1.5″ of rain for the day), the fishing was steady.

One of several squalls that hit us like the water was being dumped from a bucket

At times the rain hit us like sheets, as if there simply wasn’t room between the raindrops, so the whole mess fell at once.

Want to test rain gear? I’ve got the place.

Grand Laker Canoe (they fill up fast)

Two fish in the 16″-17″ range came to the boat, and because Big Lake is weedy and shallow and rich, a steady stream of 12″-14″ smallies ate my plastic jerkbait and drop shot rig, and because we’re talking about smallmouth, I was never really sure how big the fish were until they were in the net.

One of the rare sunny moments -- so we went for a shore lunch.

Catch a smallmouth and he’ll run you around the canoe a half-dozen times, and unlike trout or largemouth bass — which kind of give up after a while and flop over on their side — smallmouth bass fight to the net, and then glare at you out of those demonic red eyes, as if to say “I’ll see you in hell.”

Day Two (or, Really?!)

Day Two dawned clear, and the morning’s fishing on West Grand Lake was tough; one here, one there — even getting enough for a shore lunch was a challenge.

You can almost taste it (I actually did)

After The Big Shore Lunch (something created by guides to make clients sleepy and compliant so they go home earlier), Steve Schaefer and I pulled up on an island that looked like all the other islands, and Steve said “I’ve always wanted to try this, but never have.”

1. First cast = 14″ smallmouth
2. Second cast = 13″ smallmouth
3. Third cast = 14″ smallmouth
4. (repeat for the next twenty minutes)

It was — literally — a fish every cast.

After 20 minutes we started to feel guilty and slowly moved around to the other side of this tiny island (we’d been anchored), and the action slowed immediately to a fish… every third or fourth cast.

As near as we could figure, a school of smelt had been backed up against a steep dropoff bordered by two cabin-sized boulders, and every smallmouth bass within cellphone range (who knew?) had hurried over for lunch.

By the time we’d circled the tiny island, we were back in the fish-every-cast routine, and I was out of (apparently) smelt-colored baits.

I even told Steve that nobody at camp was going to believe what sounded a hell of a lot like a fish story. They were, I said, all going to say ‘Really??’ with that disbelieving roll of their eyes.

You don’t try to top a performance like that, so with the sun still bright, we headed back to camp.

Where, it turns out… everyone said “Really??” — even the L&T.

Et, Tu, L&T?

Fishermen are portrayed as a shifty lot; we lie to other fishermen about the number of fish we catch (we say we caught more if we caught fewer, and less if we caught a lot), the places we fish, and the kind of day we had (“It was just great to be out there“), but when we stumble onto the kind of fishing that most people don’t believe actually exists — a fish every cast — then we pay the price for all the prevarication.

The Wrapup

It’s hard to summarize an experience like Maine; the cloudscapes and landscapes differ so much from this part of the world that my mind gets stuck in reset mode; the experience isn’t quite alien, but it’s different.

I fished a pair of days from a Grand Laker canoe that turned out to be the last built by Pop Moore, and if you’re into Grand Lakers, that name drops very loudly indeed.

The sum total of the experience outweighs the hassles getting from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere, though that may not be true in coming years.

See you back in the mountains, Tom Chandler.

And so, as sun sets slowly in the west...

Actual pocket lint from a 21 hour travel day (think there's a reality show in this?)

Facing mounds of “Deal With Me” messages, I’m tempted to simply declare email/online bankruptcy, starting over with a clean slate and a guilt-free mind, but when you’re self-employed, that’s not how it works.

I did manage to download the trip’s photographs, which aren’t exactly art, but do nicely punctuate the stories stored in the Underground’s ‘dazed by too little sleep and too much travel’ brain.

This afternoon, you’ll see a post. I promise.

I’ve got a lot of notes.

And a Big News Post soon.

See you trying to remember where the kitchen is, Tom Chandler.

Many fish were caught, but a week is never enough at Grand Lake Stream, and as the L&T’s mom pointed out, it was never meant to be.

In what I’ll call “the olden days,” people would come to a camp like this for a month, or better yet, the whole summer, and your vacation could take on that languid, relaxed pace that is both rejuvenating and memorable.

Today, a week is an eternity to the L&T and I, both of us quietly wrestling with jobs/client work while we’re supposed to be on vacation.

Surveys suggest today’s workforce believes a “vacation” is a long weekend with a restaurant visit thrown in, and the concept of a whole summer off is probably more tightly entwined with retirement (or death) than it is your working life.

It’s not a complaint as much as an observation — we presumably make these choices for ourselves — but you do wonder if we’re creating lives so fractured they’re more jigsaw puzzle than seamless big picture.

On that note, my writing minutes have evaporated; time to load up the car for the trip to Bangor, where a hotel (and a plane, and another plane, and a long-term parking shuttle, and a 5.5 hour drive home) await.

See you on the way home, Tom Chandler.

Unfortunately, the card reader’s not reading the photos from my camera and I’m writing this on the back porch in the dark, wearing a headlamp and getting eaten by mosquitoes, so here are the highlights:

On Wednesday a local guide and I endured a pummeling at the hands of several rainstorms (a measured 1.5″ of rain in the rain gauge at the canoe), but still managed to land a steady stream of Big Lake smallmouth.

I had a couple in the 16″-17″ range, and way more than a couple in the 13″-14″ range.

Not exactly world-beating stuff, but damned satisfying on a day when most of the fishermen seemed to be running for cover instead of hooking up.

Thursday (today) was clearer, warmer and windier — the kind of post-front bluebird day that would prompt me to say “we’ll have to work for ‘em today” in one of those statements meant to make me seem like a knowledgeable expert (which I’m not).

For the first half of the day, it was true; only a few bass were fooled, and the Big Shore Lunch was imperiled by our inability to boat fish in the 10″-12″ slot limit.

Luckily, one of the boats trolling leadcore got a couple to match our couple (this was a big family fishing day, with four Grand Laker canoes on the water), and lunch was saved.

Later, we split up, and my guide and I pulled up on an island (that looked like all the other islands) and he said “I’ve always meant to fish this, never have.”

First cast = 13″ smallmouth bass.
Second cast = 14″ smallmouth bass.
The next 20 casts = nice-sized smallmouth bass.

This went on for a good half hour — right up until we started circling the island (we hadn’t moved) because we were feeling guilty about beating up that one spot.

Two hours later we simply gave up and went home, the bite having “slowed” from every-cast to every-fourth-or-fifth cast.

Even gluttony, it seems, is relative.

There’s plenty more to come — but only when the mosquitoes are having dinner somewhere else. (Expect Grand Laker canoe pics and “A Knowledgeable Expert Tells You How to Catch a Smallmouth Bass On Every Cast”

See you on the lake, Tom Chandler.

It’s even possible I’m turning into a Cranky Old Guy; I got tired of flight crews and airport workers cutting in front of us in the “families with kids” line at security, finally simply standing in the way until we got through.

(Coming soon to a post office wall near you: my face.)

The next morning — the hell that is your average airport terminal was replaced by aging pine shacks and little waves on the shore, and life seemed tenable again. In fact, I felt so good that I rigged my casting rod and wandered through the crowd of kids at the dock to unlimber the muscles with a few test casts, and on the first “test” the hcast I hooked a 12″ smallmouth bass.

The four little kids screamed.

Meski, I noticed, ran the length of the dock and stood by daddy in what I assumed was hero worship (in retrospect, I may have been wrong about that).

I promptly handed the rod to her, and she promptly dropped it as soon as she felt the fish pull, so I picked it up and landed the fish, holding the shiny green bass up for all the kids to touch before I let him go.

They made the appropriate noises, and watched intently (as only kids can) while he swam back into deep water.

Puffing up just a little, I turned and faced the small mob, ready to receive my due as a shining example of male perfection; the World’s Greatest Dad and Fisherman.

Instead, they turned on me.

“Catch another” the dark-haired niece yelled.

“We want more fish!” chanted another.

“Daddy catch big fish now!” Meski said (et tu, Meski?).

Oh.

I was expecting adulation.

I got expectation.

Two casts later I hadn’t caught a fish, so the mob — clearly disappointed — melted away, my status falling from genius to has-been in less than 90 seconds.

Turns out fame among the fresh-out-of-diapers set is fleeting.

Note to self: When you’re teaching kids, you’re not even as good as your last fish — you’re only as good as the time interval to your next one…

See you on the dock (trying to redeem myself), Tom Chandler

More from West Grand Lake soon.

Which means I can leave the waders, wading boots and a lot of other gear at home (nobody who travels with a 2.75 year-old argues against traveling light).

It also means digging out (and re-lining) a few of my (ahem) vintage Abu-Garcia casting reels and Cardinal spinning reels — old reels that work as well as the day they came from the factory, and this despite a lot of use back in my Bay Area days.

It also means an online trip to Bass Pro Shops (finesse worms, hooks, line — and a pair of those topwater poppers that turn smallmouth bass fishing into a spectator sport).

A visit to Bass Pro Shops is like a day at a carnival; everything’s larger (and louder) than life, and the copy is brazenly over-the-top — yet somehow lacking in pretension, which makes it entertaining rather than irritating.

After all, everyone in fly fishing “reveres” the Adams dry fly, but if Kevin Van Dam used one to win a tournament, it would be “Guaranteed to attract bone-crushing strikes via its exclusive “multi-hacklepoint” design that in lab experiments generated a feeding frenzy every time.”

The Fishing Grounds

Check out those dropoffs (I sometimes launch from the little dock in the bottom cutout)

We’ll be staying on the little peninsula in the satellite photo — in rustic old cabins lounging beneath the trees — and every good stillwater fisherman has already noted the shallow water areas and the dropoffs to deeper water.

Some days I’ll simply rig a drop shot worm or a topwater on a casting rod, push one of the small kayaks into the water, and fish my way along the dropoff which runs off the bottom of the photo.

It fishes every bit as good as it looks — especially in those places where big rocks can be found at the bottom of the dropoff (yes, I know where those rocks are).

It’s lazy fishing made all the sweeter by a steady stream of smallmouth bass, who are cranky enough to turn the kayak around, then glare at you with those red eyes once you’ve landed them.

The triangle-shaped offshore shallow area on the left seems hit or miss, though when it’s on, the fish are bigger.

The island at the top hasn’t ever produced anything but small fish, despite the fact the upper shallow area is something of a gateway to a large, shallow (presumably food-filled) bay.

Some mysteries, it seems, aren’t meant to be unraveled.

Other days, we’ll load up one of the Grand Laker canoes and head out for more promising fishing grounds (made so by the distance we have to travel to get there), and no, I’m not producing maps to those.

Clearly, this is an Underground fishing vacation of a wholly different kind, and while this may be the first Maine vacation where I experience anything approaching reliable Internet access, I’m not promising daily reports.

See you in Maine, Tom Chandler.

Montana was a little slice of heaven (as if the pictures hadn’t told you that already), and Maine was what Maine always is: rustic, ageless and fun (plus pie and lobster).

The L&T headed to town in a Grand Laker Canoe

Still, I feel like I haven’t been home in months.

I mean, what’s happening on my favorite alpine stream? My alpine brookie lakes? The Upper McCloud? My favorite Upper Sac spots? I’m drawing blanks on all of them.

Time to get to work.

I’m wrapping up my Maine trip with this post, and providing valuable information about how you too can become the Wiffleball Death Match MVP (hint: make a headfirst belly flop onto home plate, craft a triple play, a double play, and an Ozzie-Smith-like nab of a line drive, then whine a lot about damaging yourself for the team, and you’re in).

Plus a few leftover pictures, starting with…

The Canoe You Should Own, But Can’t

First, there’s the cedar lapstrake canoe that one of you is not going to win in a drawing by the Downeast Lakes Land Trust, which is a damned shame.

Want to win this? You can’t (and I didn’t).

If I’d twigged to the drawing sooner, I think a great big bait ball sized school of Undergrounders would have thrown down $10 for a chance to win this gorgeous floating canoe (it’s like a supermodel with thwarts), but alas, there was no warning.

The drawing’s over (and I didn’t win either).

Sorry, wood-loving Undergrounders.

Grand Laker Canoe Redux

My posts about Grand Laker Canoes from two years ago still score a lot of traffic. Clearly, there’s a lot of interest in these great craft, yet when people had questions, I had nowhere to send them.

Until now.

Bill Shamel’s still building Grand Lakers (he’s Pop Moore’s son-in-law).

Bill Shamel’s shop in Grand Lake Stream continues to pump out 5-10 Grand Laker canoes annually, and he takes on interesting restoration projects.

Want to know more? You’ll find contact information for Shamel and a couple other Grand Laker builders here.

The Dark and Moody Underground

What’s left are a few kinda moody photographs that simply don’t fit anywhere else on the Underground’s inevitably sunny pages.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Early tomorrow morning, the L&T and I pack up, leave Grand Lake Stream, Maine, and head back to the Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters in Mount Shasta.

Our stay in Grand Lake Stream, Maine has been big fun (and big calories), but the dialup access is so slow and spotty I’m not even trying to post anything until I get home.

The food has been awesome, the fishing sublime, and yes, the Wiffleball game went the way of the just and righteous Underground’s team, with yours truly representing big for the Underground Way of Life to the tune of a headfirst slide into home and a triple play.

More on my athletic (and eating) prowess after Sunday’s travel day, which likely won’t end until midnight, and that’s assuming our close, personal friends at the major airlines don’t strand us halfway.

See you traveling, Tom Chandler.

We were interested in little more than knocking some of the dust off the gear, and – just like the guides suggested – we caught little smallmouth bass pretty much everywhere we went.

It wasn’t high drama, but it was damned fun.

Later, I snorkled around the dock and boathouse, shadowed by an 11″ smallmouth who clearly didn’t want any pasty white mammal competing for his territory (smallies are agressive).

Luckily, I survived my Brush with Jaws, only to face a larger jeopardy.

Tomorrow is a ostensibly a “big” fishing day – guides have been engaged and gear is being readied – but in truth, much of the drama there revolves around the traditional shore lunch.

Some think of the traditional shore lunch as a social event; something echoing back to a simpler time when even people who were fishing for real had time to relax and socialize a little in the middle of the day.

I know better.

The simple truth is this: the guides know that stuffing clients full of steak, potatoes and piece results in people too sleepy to fish.

Thus, the day ends early, and the tip is preserved.

Of course, having uncovered the Secret of the Guide Lunch, my life is jeopardy.

The Traditional Maine Guide Mafia – desperate to preserve their ugly little secret – would do almost anything to prevent the sprea