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August, 2005
Hooked on Fishing
Our 4th of July Penobscot River fishing trip
by: Karyn Roy
This years 4th of July weekend was an action packed three days of good boating, back road driving, and great fishing. It all started Saturday morning when a bunch of us headed to Canada Falls for the first ever recreational water release. After a sweet day of kayaking, we headed along the Golden Road until we landed at one of our favorite spots, the Big Eddy. We were lucky enough to get a water site for the weekend and after watching the ‘real’ Outdoor Life Network from our campsite, we decided it was time to head out and give it a try.
I must confess that I have been a Big Eddy local for the past six years and it wasn’t until last year that I finally gave fly-fishing a try. I instantly took a hold of it and fished as much as I could until the summer ended, which unfortunately was only a couple more days. This year it was finally time to hit the river again and the 4th of July just happened to be the day.
At 8 o’clock in the morning, Jay Roy, Josh Dunn and I set out for McKay station with a raft, a couple paddles, coffee and our fly rods. Most pros will tell you the real fishing ends by 8 am, but with the Big A Surf Off the night before, we were pushing it as it was. Anyway, we headed down to McKay station where we hooked all our gear in and securely tied our rods to the thwarts. The river was running at 3,200 cfs which didn’t make my coffee go down any easier, but we were a group of three raft guides. Basically we all decided that if we flipped our raft, we’d have to quit raft guiding… Well, we made it and with such a light raft we caught ‘football eddy,’ just below the big hole Exterminator. Our plan was to fish all the spots that are only accessible by boat, but when a raft full of customers following us flipped heaving 7 people into the drink, we decided to help out. We rounded them up and sent them on their way only to already be in ‘Little Eddy.’ So much for the gorge, but as soon as we thought about hiking back up the fish started jumping.
This is where the story begins. The three of us, Jay, Josh and myself were fly-fishing out of a 14 ft raft. These guys both are way better fishermen than I, however it was still tight quarters. After working out a system for timing casts and in what directions, we were soon having luck. I caught a couple small salmon, as did Josh and Jay. We were anchored for about 1 and a half hours before we ran into a little glitch.
Jay was tying on a fly and Josh and I were fishing, when I felt a little moosefly bite on my ear. I turned my head only to see a little clear line hanging from it. “Uh Josh, I think you hooked me.” He felt so bad and we all just stared for a minute wondering what to do. Jay thought he could get it out so he tried, but to no avail. Then he grabbed a Leatherman tool and spent a good 15 minutes or so working at it. It didn’t go all the way through, which they said would have been easier to get out. Personally I wasn’t bummed about that, a new piercing?
I heard about this one technique where you tie fishline around the hook and pull. I wasn’t too psyched about that idea so Jay devised some sort of tool to aid the barb, which wasn’t crimped, out of my ear. It took some maneuvering but he did get it out and really without any scar. Impressive. As we decided to move to the next spot, I saw a little audience had formed on the bank to watch our ordeal.
I wasn’t psyched about our close quarters so at our next spot, I got out in shallow water and walked 50 yards downstream. I was just having a blast casting and enjoying my personal space when I caught a little brookie. What a day! After another unspecified amount of time, we continued downstream and caught ‘bailing eddy’. We decided that we should repack the rods as the “what if” situations got whirled around. We then caught ‘coopers pond’ and decided to leave the anchor behind. The rock (our anchor) that had held us so well up above was better off left in the pond than smashing around with us as we headed towards ‘S-shoot’. We pulled off into the current and got a big hit in ‘s-shoot’ and proceeded to roll dam eddy. Jay and Josh wanted to surf the ‘2nd typewriter’, so I volunteered to walk to rods around while the two yahoos surfed about. As soon as I retied the rods, they had us dropping into ‘bone crusher.’ It worked out well after a little surf and we floated the rest of the way back to the ‘Eddy.’
We had a wicked good time fishing the mighty West Branch and it was a nice change from just paddling the river for so many years. Despite myself being the biggest thing we caught all day, we had a super fun time and I can’t wait to get back there and do it again. Next time, I think I’ll take my own raft or maybe… wear a helmet. Anyway, we’re so lucky to have a river like the West Branch of the Penobscot and a place like the Big Eddy to enjoy! See you all up there next time!!
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