Maine Outdoor Journal

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Catch of the day: Scott Davis with one of many smallies landed on the Sebasticook.

Travis Barrett/Staff Writer

Somebody is fighting mad.

Mad enough to leap into midair, spraying water everywhere and writhing around like a 3-year-old pitching a fit. In the steamy August-afternoon solar glare, it's hard to imagine any creature can muster the energy to get that fired up about much of anything.

But this is exactly how it is on this bony stretch of the Sebasticook River. Cast after cast after cast, without one other angler to be found over more than four hours as we float from Burnham to Burnham Junction.

Small smallmouth bass, medium-sized ones, even the occasional lunker. They strike at wacky worms, poppers, spinners, floating Rapalas. I even hear they'll chase a bottle cap if you offer it up.

"And nobody even knows about it," says Scott Davis, a Master Maine Guide who routinely floats the stretch with clients.

It's one of the best-kept secrets central Maine has to offer. It's not hard to see why.

The river below the dam runs low in late summer, with rocks and weed beds a constant threat to the bottom of the canoe. Your first glance at the olive river might lead you to believe that it can't be much more than a glorified pickerel pond. My first cast of the afternoon comes in a spot where I swear that if the boat were to capsize, my big toe would be the only thing to get wet.

But that same cast produces a hoppin' mad smallie, one that jumps 6 inches above the water – its beautiful bronze markings shimmering in the arms of sunlight and spray.

The next cast produces another 12-inch fish. The next, though, comes up empty. Of course, I'm back in action just one cast later, making for – no exaggeration – three fish in the first four casts.

After three-quarters of an hour of plucking fish from the pool like wild blueberries from a bush, we decide we must paddle on if we're ever going to make it to the takeout before nightfall.

The river looks like most of us feel in the midst of a heat wave, with enough humidity to choke down those of us not accessorized with gills. The oak trees' leaves are withered and almost gray in the haze, while fallen branches and submerged stumps seem cracked from overexposure to the sun.

Still, one of my favorite parts of the trip occurs downriver a couple of hours later, testament to the almost comical nature with which smallies attack.

I cast a popper at a pile of brush stacked up on the right side of the river, waiting for the water rings to disappear before giving it the twitch that creates the commotion atop the water.

Water roils behind it, a with a whoosh and a splash, a smallie strikes.

And misses completely. The lure never moves an inch, so I twitch it again.

With rapid-fire succession, the bass makes three – three! – consecutive and separate strikes. Mired in doubt, I start reeling the fish to the boat.

Suddenly, it's gone.

At the rear of the canoe, Davis is laughing out loud.

"You never set the hook!" he says.

"But I could never tell when he had it," is my explanation. I shake my head and start laughing, too. "I watched it the whole time, and I'm not sure if it was the second time or the 12th time that he hit that he had it."

Overhead, a juvenile bald eagle rustles the leaves of a low-slung branch as it takes off. I think it's disgusted with us.

Because the river is low, and because the water temperature climbs into the upper 70s in the shallowest parts, the smallies are on the lethargic side. Lots of short strikes from the fish, a few hook sets that never take hold and allow the fish to wiggle free.

By night's end, as bats swirl around us and knock the mosquito population down to size, we reach the takeout point. We've seen eagles, a heron, an osprey and four different species of fish numbering – by our conservative estimates – close to 40.

Before we load up the boat, we're already talking about the next time we'll make the trip.

Staff writer Travis Barrett can be reached at 621-5648 or:

tbarrett@centralmaine.com