When fisheries biologists at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife go about their job, they're often electro-fishing, trap-netting or gathering data in other ways, including with scientific instruments.

Or, DIF&W biologists may choose a fishing rod to collect fish specimens. They just cast like sports anglers and wrestle fish to the boat or shore for inspection. Imagine a job where someone pays you to fish.

When these professionals relax, they sometimes go fishing, too, and why not? Love of fishing originally drew them to the profession.

This past week, local fisheries biologist Bill Woodward was telling me about his holiday weekend, bass fishing on Bear Pond in Hartford and Turner. One of his observations floored me. "Floored" might be a bit of an exaggeration -- but not much of one.

Woodward caught a large female bass that hadn't spawned yet. He discovered this surprising fact while cleaning the fish for a meal.

Normally, smallmouths and largemouths propagate in June, and in fact, we have fishing regulations designed to accommodate this natural reproduction schedule.

This past rainy, cloud-choked June had kept the water cool, so black bass are still hanging in the shallows and haven't moved to deeper drop-offs where they normally congregate as summer comes on. Apparently, some of them have held off spawning, too.

Woodward said that over the holiday weekend, Scott Davis, another local fisheries biologist, had been gathering data on Flying Pond in Mount Vernon and Vienna and noted the thermocline a mere 12 feet down, rather surprising for this time of year. It should be much deeper now.

Back in late June, Woodward and Davis were gathering data on China Lake and noted the cloudy, rainy weather had insured good, dissolved oxygen down to the 37-foot depth. China has experienced poor summer oxygen levels in years past, but this season, fish in this large lake can breath where they normally would suffocate.

Not only are fish finding plenty of cool, oxygenated water, but lack of aquatic flora has impressed Woodward. Back in June, Davis and Woodward were gathering data on Big Indian Pond in St. Albans -- a long, shallow water that normally produces carpets of submerged weeds by now. This year, Big Indian has much less growth than normal.

Maine has endured several rainy years now, and this meteorological pattern has insured that salmonids find plenty of cold water for spawning and nurseries -- far more than in most years over the last century.

Here's a perfect, well-documented example to illustrate the point:

The St. George River between Liberty and Thomaston has marginal water for trout and salmon and relies on stocking to produce a recreational fishery. In summer, trout find refuge in ponds along the drainage as well as in feeder brooks and springs along the river -- both of the latter sources extremely limited there. Ponds offer the most sanctuary by far.

In the 1990s, fisheries biologists for DIF&W proved how limited spawning and nursery habitat proved for salmonids in the St. George during normal years. They put instruments up and down the river, which recorded daily water temperatures for several weeks. This established that the river had overly warm temperatures, severely curtailing salmonid recruitment.

According to Woodward, the coldest stretch of the St. George flowed in Searsmont below Bartlett Stream -- thanks to plenty of shade and springs there -- but even that section proved too warm for brookies and browns. Bartlett warms considerably in August along that Searsmont stretch, so the river gets little help from this source. (Many miles upstream and two dams later in Montville, though, Bartlett Stream's cool upper reaches produce abundant wild brookies.)

Despite the dismal evaluation for St. George trout recruitment in that study 15 years ago, a graduate student in spring 2008 did research below Sennebec Pond and found evidence galore of salmonid reproduction. She recorded myriad juvenile salmonids, showing beyond doubt that trout reproduced there in recent years, thanks to cool, wet weather creating more spawning and nursery habitat.

One point about DIF&W's fisheries biologists has impressed me big time, and a digression may influence readers to appreciate them, too:

In central Maine's Region B, four biologists oversee 400-plus ponds and lakes and 3,500 miles of flowing water, averaging out to over 100 still waters each and 825 miles of rivers, streams and brooks, typical in regions across Maine.

Despite this seemingly impossible workload, I've noticed that in recent years, biologists are tailoring stocking numbers to increased reproduction. It cannot be an exact science because with so much water each, how many places can biologists research properly to come up with accurate figures to match the increased production, generated by so much rain and unseasonably cold weather?

During several normal years in a row, biologists have worked hard to match hatchery fish to wild reproduction in each water. (So many Maine waters have wild salmonids but far too few fish to provide a sports fishery).

In recent years, though, the biologists' task has become complicated by nature's cool weather bounty for salmonids. Places that haven't produced wild trout or salmon in decades are now pumping them out.

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The 917-foot long Edwards Dam on Maine's Kennebec River came down in July 1999, the first privately owned hydroelectric dam in U.S. history torn down for environmental reasons.

Since then, according to a recent article in "The New York Times," private- and public-funded sources have led to the removal of 430 outdated dams nationwide -- some of them hydroelectric facilities like Edwards.

Since Edwards came down, striped-bass and American-shad fishing have improved in the Kennebec between Gardiner and Waterville, and folks in the know expect more good fishing stories developing on the Sebasticook because of the recent removal of Halifax Dam. The good times are rolling.

Well-known, black-bass angler Harry Vanderweide of Augusta raves about the great smallmouth fishing on the Kennebec's Sidney stretch, and for years, he has shown us the blistering action firsthand with his TV show.

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