This past week, my late father must have been rolling in his grave. His only son skipped deer hunting on the second open day of the regular firearms season to fly-fish the Solon stretch of the Kennebec River.

"What kind of effete elitist would fly-fish during deer season?" he would have asked.

"Times have changed since you were a boy in Aroostook," I would have answered.

For me, the trip proved a last hurrah on this section before fishing closed there Wednesday. Lower reaches of the Kennebec from the Abenaki (Lower) Dam in Madison to the ocean stay open year-round, but upriver, open-water angling ended at midnight last Wednesday.

Bob Mallard from Kennebec River Outfitters, Bill Sheldon of Hartland and Greene, R.I., and I were floating the Kennebec between Solon and North Anson, hoping for an afternoon blue-winged-olive hatch. We were targeting a mayfly species in the Baetis genus that kicks off its procreative activities when the fall water temperature drops to 53 degrees, according to Mallard, who fishes the river all the time.

Bob was rowing his drift-boat and telling Bill and me that these aquatic insects had emerged sporadically the afternoon before. The water had dropped to 51 degrees after a 25-degree night, so we expected a more prolific hatch that afternoon -- thanks to the cooler water and cloud cover.

Before this rather predictable insect event, Bill and I were casting heavily weighted streamers with rabbit-strip wings, working the shallows against the bank, hoping to haul out big browns.

The morning began with me being as bored as a man can get because two natural indicators promised poor fishing -- a bad moon phase and northwest wind. The day turned out better than I expected, though, much better, creating lifetime memories.

Brookies were staging in the river current below a tributary, where a 15-incher grabbed my big streamer. DIF&W had stocked the trout as a fall yearling last year, and it had rocketed from the deeper channel into the shallows near the bank and smashed my fly.

Later, though, life got even better. Further downstream, another brookie about 17 inches long, maybe bigger, blasted into the shallows from deeper water and smacked my big streamer, quite a thrill. We measured the first brookie, and I wish we had checked the second one. Bill was shooting photos, though, and I was anxious to get the beauty back into the river.

DIF&W stocks brookies these days that live to 3 to 5 years old. I suspected this bigger trout was a 3-year-old, and Bill Woodward, a fisheries biologist at the department, agreed.

We took brightly colored browns, too, but the day had a downside.

Lots of browns hit the rabbit-strip streamer short, reminding me of our experiences on the Solon to North Anson float the month before. I was standing in the bow with a super pair of Polarizing sunglasses, which gave me an opportunity to see trout hit my rabbit strip behind the hook and stretch the wing out like an elastic. Of course, the hook couldn't bite home.

Where the 15-inch brookie had hit my streamer, a 19-inch or longer brown grabbed my fly and really stretched the rabbit wing -- so frustrating. It held onto the wing for two or three seconds before opening its maw to let go. I saw the whole thing in living Technicolor, thanks to the sunglasses.

Later, I changed to a shorter winged fly, which drew far fewer strikes -- another version of damned if you do and damned if you don't.

The east shore of this stretch of the Kennebec has a few extremely high, steep eskers, a geological formation left by the last glacier. Streams flowing under the decaying, glacial ice sheet form long, narrow ridges of coarse gravel that later become great habitat for white pine or poplar.

That day, I climbed one of these eskers with plans of scooting out to the road so I would know where to park next season to walk into a very productive pool.

On the hike, a cranky deer hunter interrupted my hike and told me his buddies were closer to the road. I was wearing a hunter-orange hat but decided to give up my exploring for another day.

One feature of the float proved true once again. Mallard really knows the holding banks and back channels to show his guests a good time.

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For 20 years, I spent six weeks a year in Canada, mostly chasing Atlantic salmon. This gave me an opportunity to fish 24 salmon rivers -- give or take one or two. This experience provided me ample opportunity to judge the size of Salmo-genus salmonids that average nine to 10 pounds.

With that said, I was fishing Belgrade Stream last week and found where brown trout and salmon were going through the motions of beginning to spawn.

One old brute brown was close to the size of an average Atlantic salmon. It held near a rock in somewhat shallow water flowing over a gravel bottom -- classic. Not once did my myriad presentations even move its fin, but life feels darned good when a fellow has such big fish for a target. We're talking a brown trout that you find in places like Argentina or Chile.

Steve Duren of Belgrade told me about these salmonids, but I've kept my eye on them at this spot for years. Surprisingly, no one bothers with them, even though it's easy to see the fish from a road.

Bill Woodward, a fisheries biologists for DIF&W, claims these browns and salmon do go through spawning steps there but are unsuccessful producing offspring. Go figure.

It's deer season, though, so we should be hunting, not fishing, but fly-fishing over a predictable hatch offers a huge allure, even for serious deer slayers. The Madison, Skowhegan Gorge and Shawmut stretch of the Kennebec have BWO hatches all this month -- traditional fly-fishing.

Ken Allen, of Belgrade Lakes, is a writer, editor and photographer.