raftman
Active member
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2012
- Messages
- 942
"The greatest warriors are those who dangle a human for hours on a string, break sacred water for the profanity of air, then snap fiercely back into pearly molecules that describe fishness" - Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate
Every few years, I find myself returning to the north Maine woods to exist, even just for a few days, in the shadows of Katahdin and the murmur of the Penobscot. It is this mountain and this river that I seem to owe so much to. They have shaped my life's path more than most anything else.
I was first taken in by these woods and waters while I was working on the trail crew at Baxter State Park. I didn't do much fishing then; instead, I spent my time relentlessly exploring, expending all that 21-year-old energy into rafting down the class 5 rapids of the Crib Works and reaching every peak I could over our three day weekends after working four-tens building rock staircases up Katahdin and clearing twenty miles of blow-downs in a day. My knees never hurt, my skin grew immune to the hordes of black flies, my eyes were always looking beyond each false peak and around each river bend. I didn't take much time to study what I was rafting or hiking - too much to see up ahead.
Now I make a pilgrimage every couple of years not to push myself into deep unknowns, but to revisit certain trails and pools and to find those tiny mysteries that exist right in front of us. And to hopefully land some beautiful landlocked salmon and brook trout.
This year's journey was interesting. Maine has had a wicked wet spring, so everything seemed to be operating a few weeks behind. You can usually count on crazy caddis hatches the last week of June. Not this year. It seemed like every time caddis started to break out and cover the water, a storm would roll in. Even on the nights that the hatch happened, the salmon just didn't seemed to be honed in on them yet.
Though it didn't matter. I just had to adapt, and to try to survive the crazy swarms of black flies and mosquitoes (the bugs were incredibly bad this year, everyone said they were the worse in years). I managed to find quite a few salmon and quite a few new spots on the river to fish. I also got to be in the reaches of Katahdin, which itself is worth the 12 hour drive and the bugs.
Though this year was difficult fishing, it was still a great experience. I love to revisit some waters - it isn't about seeing the same thing, but about uncovering another mystery about a place you thought you knew. I may fish this same run I did last year, but when I look up, the clouds clipping across Katahdin have a notion I've never seen before and the salmon that just attacked my emerger takes me for a ride downstream that I'll never forget, his last jump over my head a fine farewell until I come back.
Every few years, I find myself returning to the north Maine woods to exist, even just for a few days, in the shadows of Katahdin and the murmur of the Penobscot. It is this mountain and this river that I seem to owe so much to. They have shaped my life's path more than most anything else.
I was first taken in by these woods and waters while I was working on the trail crew at Baxter State Park. I didn't do much fishing then; instead, I spent my time relentlessly exploring, expending all that 21-year-old energy into rafting down the class 5 rapids of the Crib Works and reaching every peak I could over our three day weekends after working four-tens building rock staircases up Katahdin and clearing twenty miles of blow-downs in a day. My knees never hurt, my skin grew immune to the hordes of black flies, my eyes were always looking beyond each false peak and around each river bend. I didn't take much time to study what I was rafting or hiking - too much to see up ahead.
Now I make a pilgrimage every couple of years not to push myself into deep unknowns, but to revisit certain trails and pools and to find those tiny mysteries that exist right in front of us. And to hopefully land some beautiful landlocked salmon and brook trout.
This year's journey was interesting. Maine has had a wicked wet spring, so everything seemed to be operating a few weeks behind. You can usually count on crazy caddis hatches the last week of June. Not this year. It seemed like every time caddis started to break out and cover the water, a storm would roll in. Even on the nights that the hatch happened, the salmon just didn't seemed to be honed in on them yet.
Though it didn't matter. I just had to adapt, and to try to survive the crazy swarms of black flies and mosquitoes (the bugs were incredibly bad this year, everyone said they were the worse in years). I managed to find quite a few salmon and quite a few new spots on the river to fish. I also got to be in the reaches of Katahdin, which itself is worth the 12 hour drive and the bugs.
Though this year was difficult fishing, it was still a great experience. I love to revisit some waters - it isn't about seeing the same thing, but about uncovering another mystery about a place you thought you knew. I may fish this same run I did last year, but when I look up, the clouds clipping across Katahdin have a notion I've never seen before and the salmon that just attacked my emerger takes me for a ride downstream that I'll never forget, his last jump over my head a fine farewell until I come back.
