Outdoors
The BDN outdoors section brings readers into the woods, waters and wild places of Maine. It features stories on hunting, fishing, wildlife, conservation and recreation, told by people who live these experiences. This section emphasizes hands-on knowledge, field reports, issues, trends and the traditions that define life outside in Maine. Read more Outdoors stories here.
The summer months on Sebago had less fizzle than a dud firecracker on the Fourth of July, but times, they are a-changin’. Cool nights, winds that churn the lake and cool rains have dropped the water temperatures but bumped up the fishing action. Anglers are reporting more lake trout catches and some whopper salmon coming to the net. This is what fall fishing is all about.
Some days this past summer it seemed like you couldn’t buy a bite. I recall a few charter trips this past summer that took more than an hour to latch onto the first fish. Now we are counting the strike intervals by minutes. Fellow guides CJ Harmon, Dan Hillier and I ran bait all summer long, in the hope that the real thing would work best. It did save us from getting skunked and likely accounted for our success.
For the past four weeks, I’ve been seeing pin smelt, tiny young rainbow smelt, in the mouths and stomachs of lake trout and salmon I catch. When clients want to keep a fish to eat, I dress them by removing the intestines and heads before packaging the fish up to take home. This gives me a glance at what the fish are feeding on.
For the last month, fish have been loaded with pin smelt. Last week I saw the first heavy evidence of alewives. Alewives can migrate out of a lake and we had not seen many this summer, so that is likely what took place. Not all fish leave the lake, so it’s common to find a few. About three weeks back, fish were full of yellow perch fry. My rudimentary examinations are an interesting way to examine what fish are feeding on and give me clues about what bait or lures to use.
I have a good stock of frozen smelt, so while I’ve been seeing pin smelt, I have been using smelt. If I see alewives increasing, I’ll switch to shiners. Alewives are not legal to use as bait, but large shiners mimic the shape and color of alewives satisfactorily.
Angler Bob Galeckas from Gilford, New Hampshire, has been renting my Airbnb studio on the lake and bringing his boat up to fish Sebago. He’s a die-hard streamer troller and has it dialed in. He was up the second week of September this year and brought his pal Tony Picucci from Hatfield, Virginia, along. They had several days of 24-plus fish per day and landed some whopper salmon, including a 6.4-pound hook-jawed male.
Bob prefers salmon over lakers, but he caught several lake trout, as well. As he was heading out, he assured me he would be back next spring.
As the lake “turns over” and cools, salmon and lake trout come up higher in the water column, making them prime targets for my favorite way of fishing: trolling with fly rods. I run fly rods all summer with heavy sinking lines and generally catch a laker or salmon on each trip, but this month this technique really shines.
Trolling at bait speeds of 1.2 to 1.5 mph, my sinking lines drop to about 25 feet deep, perfect territory for salmon cruising the cooler waters looking for feed. While I have had my best luck with bait, picking up the pace to 2.5 to 2.8 mph and dragging a lure like the DB Smelt — pearlescent white and pink have been favorites — can often entice a reluctant fish into biting.
Great fishing continues into October as water temperatures plummet further. Sebago anglers need to remember that as of Oct. 1, the lake goes to “artificial lures only” to protect the pre-spawn fish. Salmon must immediately be released, but anglers can continue to harvest lake trout.
Cool nights, sunny days and great fishing allow anglers to usher out the summer before they switch over to fall pursuits. Heck, you could even do a cast-and-blast day, starting out on the water and ending in the woods.