Trout brook fishing has ancient, honorable heritage

Saturday, April 23, 2005

When I was growing up in Windsor, that town and others around it were just beginning to become bedroom communities for Augusta, but farming still reigned as their raison d'etre. In those halcyon, Eisenhower years, a handful of men in the region had reputations for catching brook trout in small brooks, and rural people in such a predominantly agrarian society truly respected that skill.

After all, this was a time when folks such as my father might drive across a small, wooden bridge over a trout brook and say in a hushed voice, "There's trout here, if you know where to find them."

These places were secrets, explaining the hushed voice, even when no one was around to hear except me.

Each late April, when black flies started swarming and alder leaves reached the size of a mouse ear, folks such as Kimball Wilcox, Elrick Grotton and Lawrence French knew exactly where to find these woodland char. The water would be approaching ideal temperatures, so brookies would be on the feed. These men, all passed away now, would catch a mess of brook trout from brooks and show the speckled beauties off at Hussey's General Store, once again solidifying their reputations.

In my late teens, I began tagging along after French on many early season, brookie outings, and we caught plenty of fish. An afternoon from one of those times many Aprils ago remains stubbornly in my mind.

During an unseasonable warm spell, Lawrence and I were fishing for brook trout on Davis Brook, which runs from Savade Pond into the West Branch of the Sheepscot in Windsor. That year, I was 22 going on 12, and the trip created a lasting memory because of a practical joke that kept Lawrence sputtering for months.

French was a distinguished-looking man in his 50s and had wide shoulders and narrow hips -- built like the proverbial sparkplug. He had a full head of hair well-trimmed all the time and a 5 o'clock shadow at noontime. This man was a wonderful bait angler, who fished with worms, an old steel telescopic rod and level-wind reel.

When brook fishing, he would sit behind bushes or tree trunks on the bank, where trout could not see him. From this concealed position, he could pay close attention to his line -- ready for any twitch. His furtive approach insured that during slow periods of the day, he would be bored, so that April afternoon, a Saturday, he stuck a pint bottle of whisky diluted with ginger ale into his hip pocket.

At the beginning of the trip, we had split up and planned to meet two hours later at a 19th century rock dam, the last remains of an old, shovel-handle factory.

Over the two hours of fishing, my Wooly Worm wet fly fooled four brookies in the 7- to 9-inch range, and a bigger one 10- to 11-inches long got away -- typical small, brook fishing in central Maine. I kept the four trout to eat with baked tomatoes stuffed with rice pilaf, frenched-string beans with slivered almonds and a real French Chablis.

When I came upstream toward the dam two hours later, Lawrence was hiding behind a large red maple, while fishing a worm in an eddy below the old rock structure. He did not notice me, and his intensity made me think he had fared well, probably much better than I had done with flies.

Lawrence appeared far too comfortable, sitting there sipping from the bottle and scrutinizing his line. He was barely taking his eye off the thin thread of monofilament, and best of all, his creel was behind him.

The man looked far too comfortable, so I just had to plague him. After slipping behind a fir thicket, I circled around to sneak up behind him. The roaring water racing through a hole in the dam drowned the sound of my approach, so while the unsuspecting man concentrated on fishing, I slipped four brook trout into his creel.

After tip-toeing away and circling back downstream, I walked boldly toward him, staying away from the water so not to frighten his fish but keeping in sight so he would notice me. In the most casual voice, I said, "How'd you do?"

"Oh, sevenÉmaybe eight fish," Lawrence said proudly. The limit then was eight brookies, so this was going to be better than a prankster could have hoped.

Not wanting to appear anxious, I waited 30 or so seconds before saying " Let's see 'em,"

Lawrence opened the creel and then did a double-take. I peered in, and the creel held an even dozen trout. In a serious voice with a slightly scolding tone, I said "Wardens sneak in here often enough, you know. "

I could see the gears grinding. He was asking himself, "Have I had that much to drink?"

Soon, Lawrence was asking me to take four of them off his hands, and at first, I rejected his offer, claiming I did not want to be part of his poaching. Then, I finally let him talk me into helping him out, and after he gave me four fish, he decided on a fifth fish in case he caught another. He didn't land another one, though.

When we arrived back at his house later in the afternoon, he wanted me to return the five fish, but I said no way. It took me several months to fess up to the joke, and in that time, the man sputtered plenty about me stealing his five brookies.

That was Windsor in the old days, and today, those same brooks that French, Wilcox and Grotton fished still produce plenty of trout because brook anglers are far less common now. Some of the brooks are just as good if not better than they were 50 years ago, too, proving that novelist Thomas Wolfe was wrong. We can go home again, and if we are lucky, the distance is not that far in a state like Maine.

Correspondent Ken Allen, of Belgrade Lakes, writes outdoors columns for the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal. E-mail: KAllyn800@aol.com