11/15/2008
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Staff photo by Travis Barrett
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Staff photo by Travis Barrettfrom the Kennebec Journal
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All of today's:
News | Sports
from the Morning Sentinel
Staff Writer
You know it's cold when the water temperature at midday is higher than the air temperature.
If you're Wayne Ladd, though, that hardly means it's too cold to go fishing. In fact, it only means you add an extra layer -- and a 20-year-old ski mask -- to the tackle box before you hop in the boat. The semi-retired angler from Brunswick takes fishing obsession to the extreme.
As my numb fingers shake uncontrollably while I pour another cup of lukewarm coffee from the thermos, Ladd says something that surely won't qualify as breaking news.
"I've probably only seen two, maybe three, other boats out here in the last month," Ladd says, turning his attention now to the north side of Buker Pond in Litchfield, the boat bobbing and weaving on the gentle waves below us. "And I'm out here two or three times a week."
I choke down the coffee. Cold as it is, it actually tastes warm in the bone-chilling wind of late autumn.
This time of year, most outdoorsmen in central Maine are focused on one thing and one thing only: the whitetail deer. Ladd, however, isn't most central Mainers. Because while he may only be on Buker "two or three times" each week, as he professes, he's spend the other days of the week testing other lakes and ponds.
The target?
The unusual panfish that most fishermen scoff at, the black crappie. For Ladd, though, his pursuit of crappie has become a calling. So much so, in fact, that he's not targeted a single other fish species this calendar year.
Not a one.
He's got the lakes and ponds to himself while others are hunting, for sure, but Ladd is every bit a hunter himself.
A crappie hunter.
Fine fishing
In less than two hours on Buker Pond on that cold day earlier this week, Ladd landed some 15 black crappie. Most were close to 12 inches long, which puts them in the category of "big" for the ornately spotted relative of the sunfish family.
"You did pretty well for Buker Pond then," said Joe Dembeck, a fisheries biologist with the Maine Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, himself an avid crappie fishermen. "We don't see a lot of large fish down there typically."
Buker Pond is part of the Tacoma Lakes, a chain of connected ponds including Woodbury, Sand and Buker. Ladd seems to know every nook and cranny of each in the trio.
The boat zips along as fast as it will steadily go -- in part because Ladd is in a hurry to hit his hallowed grounds, and also in part because the cold is nearly unbearable on exposed skin and the wind makes for choppy going in some spots.
But as we ride along, covered up in Mad Bomber hats and that two-decades-old ski mask that Ladd pulls out just for these trips, he shouts over the roar of the breeze and boat engine.
"Over there is a great spot in the summer, along that shore," he hollers, pointing over the starboard side of the watercraft.
"Right there," he shouts, "is fantastic in the spring. See that tree hanging out over the water? You can catch them one after another -- just as fast as you can cast to them -- right there. Stand on that cement (abutment) and they're there."
Ladd knows his stuff, and suddenly, as if without warning for the novice, the boat whooshes to a halt. We're 20 yards from shore, just over an area where Ladd says it begins a steady drop-off to the middle of the pond.
"Here we go," Ladd says. "Grab that rod there if you want. It's all ready to go."
Crude metallic jig heads with soft silver minnow bodies, just a couple of inches long, are rigged up to several rods resting on the boat's floor.
"I used to use 2-inch Berkley Powerbaits that looked just like these," Ladd said. "But now you can't find them anywhere, because they only have 3-inch ones now. So I just buy the 3-inch ones and either bite or cut an inch off the top and use that."
Diehards
"I think you hit the nail right on the head," Dembeck says to me later in the week, after I've thawed out and my fingers are able to transcribe notes once again. "I think the people fishing right now are the diehards that have the time to do it."
Maine relaxed its fishing laws this year, allowing for open-water fishing in more places through the end of December. Though the angling for species like crappie -- an invasive species first introduced to the state's waters almost 70 years ago -- isn't necessarily affected by such liberalization, late-autumn fishing in and of itself speaks to a different breed of angler.
It's for the fishermen who eschews time in the woods for time figuring out the habits of fish.
"It's almost like it's a more skillful angler base, I guess you could say, at this time of year," Dembeck said. "It's pretty neat to see. It's kind of different, and it's for people who want to figure some things out.
"I think you can learn a lot (in the fall). The techniques for catching fish are totally different. The fish are in different places. Their habits change."
Wayne Ladd is just that kind of angler, of course.
He carries a set of tackle for crappie each of the four seasons it seems. He takes out something so small -- and so brightly colored -- that it looks like it came out of your mother's sewing kit.
"It's for the winter," Ladd says. "They just seem to like it as small as you can find in the cold water."
A love affair
Ladd knows about fishing for crappie in the cold water. It's where he first found the species and began his torrid love affair.
He sold a smelt camp he owned to a friend of his, and then the friend invited him to go ice fishing with him. On Sewall Pond in Arrowsic, Ladd reeled in his first black crappie.
That was in January, just last winter. He all but bid a lifetime of bass fishing adieu.
"I just started talking to as many people as I could about crappie," he said. "It's what I've fished for since."
When he'd go to the sporting goods store to buy tackle, he'd ask about crappie hotspots. When he'd either load or unload his boat at various boat launches, he'd solicit advice on where to go. His ears were always open, particularly, to talk about crappie.
Just two weeks ago, he drove more than 100 miles round-trip from his home to East Pond in Oakland, just because he'd heard about crappie fishing there -- this summer.
"I still haven't found them there, but I had a couple of people tell me where they are in there," Ladd says. "In Pleasant Pond (the impoundment above Cobbossee Stream in Gardiner and Richmond), they're all through there. Just everywhere. Sabattus Pond has good crappie, too ..."
The list goes on and on, and Ladd will keep hunting still, of course, as he adds to that list. Year-round, it appears.
And it's not as though crappie fishing particularly slows down in colder conditions.
"It's a lot like fishing for largemouth bass," said Dembeck, the local fisheries biologist from Skowhegan. "Whereas smallmouth fishing will (fall off) when it gets colder, crappie are like largemouth bass in that they simply move but they don't really stop feeding.
"They're going to go to structure, but they'll probably be a little bit deeper this time of year. They'll hang on the edge of a large drop. Like most species right now, they're heading for deeper water, but that just makes them harder to spot. Once you find them, though ..."
Once you find them, you've found enough to keep you occupied for the day.
Or, at least until you start to get too cold.
Travis Barrett -- 621-5648
tbarrett@centralmaine.com
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