May and June are for mayflies and brook trout. For trillium and brook trout. For the music of grouse drums at dawn. For the perfume of campfires at dusk. For Bob Elliot and 80 of his 89 years, soon coming onto 90.

It has been splendor enough for Robert O.E. Elliot to pack into the bush and step into another stream and brook for another May. To greet the knee-deep waters, the ageless rocks, the moss-covered logs of a trout-infested rivulet. To search out those flame-finned darts with a fly. To marvel anew at how they make a living in their miniature world.

This wonderful author and Maine man, a resident these days of Venice, Fla., provided a small army of friends with a half-century of happiness, because being in his company was always pure pleasure.

His knowledge, manners and humor made for the near perfect gentleman of the open country, especially, trout country.

The initials O.E. were given when his parents thought he would be their only son, so named Bob for his two grandfathers. They had three more boys afterwards, though Bob always told questioners the O.E. stood for “Owing Everybody,” later for “Outdoor Editor,” for which he was significantly qualified.

Elliot authored a wide array of books – “The Eastern Brook Trout,” W.W. Norton, 1950; “All About Trout,” Doubleday, 1954; “All About Trout,” revised, Down East Books, 1983; “Bass Fishing In New England,” Stone Wall Press, 1973; “Northeastern Bass Fishing,” Stone Wall Press, 1977; “The Making of an Angler,” Winchester Press, 1975; and “Memoirs of a Maine Hunter,” Down East Books, 1984.

The Elliot credits need to include more than 100 stories or articles in such national publications as Argosy, True, Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, Mechanics Illustrated, True and a whole host of others.

At 89 years and approaching 90, Elliot outlasted many of those publications. In the past two decades, a number of those national publications were felled, though Owing Everybody Elliot still looks ahead to the next May-June and his favorite and beloved angling quarry, the Eastern brook trout.

All this success did not come about because Elliot happened to be a splendid camp companion and reconteur. He did learn to bait a fish hook before getting published. When he was in high school, 75 years ago, Bob attracted attention by having essays and poetry published.

“It was terribly bad writing. I get sick when I look what I put on paper back then,” he says today.

While at Boston University where he majored in journalism, Elliot worked for the Boston Herald-Traveler and Hampton, N.H., Union. The Portsmouth, N.H. Herald and the Boston Herald began printing his material, and gradually Elliot gained a reputation as a person who knew where to point the tip of a fishing rod. The rod tip increasingly pointed toward Maine’s rich trout populations. Subsequently, the Elliots came to Maine and somehow in the web of things, an introduction to small-stream brook trout seemed to fit Bob’s boyhood dreams. One cannot enjoy brook trout without knowing a tad of their history, something Bob learned through adventure and fishing as many Maine waters as time would permit.

The Elliot wit and capable hands touched all the brooks and streams. When and where brook trout existed, Bob probed the waters and got to know hundreds and hundreds of people with the same itch. They were the ones who bought his books and closely watched for his writings.

Fishing in Elliot’s company was like settling down to a day-old, generously endowed lobster stew.

One morning at Kennebago, I was watching from the path above the stream as a bent-backed old man worked a dry fly with precision. His presentations were slow and deliberate because he had all day to fish. And the next. Maybe even the one after.

He cast fruitlessly several more minutes, then pulled his way across rocks until he stood next to Elliot.

“Can’t make it work liked I used to, he announced.

He cocked his head and spat a stream of amber juice. Gettin’ too old, I guess. Damn near 85.

Bob Elliot and the old gentleman talked momentarily about everything in general and nothing in particular. Mainly a few words about Rangeley, the weather and trout. Elliot reached into his fly box and handed the man one of his favorite trout flies, a No.10 hook Royal Wulff.

“Nice old gentleman,” Bob said as we moved upstream.

Another time, camping on Umsaskis in northern Maine, Ben Pike of Wayne had a group of us in tow for fishing in northern Maine. Elliot was along, so were the Lewiston Sun’s then political writer, Lionel Lemieux, the Boston Herald’s late and fun-loving outdoor historian, Arthur Sullivan, and a couple of unknowm visitors who’d been attracted by our laughter as we circled a cheery, warming campfire. Elliot was regaling us with stories about one of his grandfathers, who, as I recall, made his living as a commercial fisherman off New Hampshire’s coast.

One of the two visitors said he was the victim of a terrible headache.

Elliot heard the man and suggested a cure. Take these two aspirin and pour yourself a drink of Jack Daniels.

The unshaven visitor, a man who appeared to have had more than a few hard nights, grasped at Elliot’s suggestion. He reached for the bottle and reduced Elliot’s Jack Daniels by half a water glass, and took it down in one gulp.

Elliot offered the man a couple of aspirin. The visitor declined.

“My doctor told me to stay away from aspirin. Upsets my stomach!”

Obviously, the visitor’s stomach could handle alcohol. Elliot had been taken. And when the two pushed off in their over-loaded canoe, Bob realized he’d been had by a man in search of Ol’ Stumpblower.

The Elliot file says very little of the man’s ability with rod and gun. He would produce a clear plastic box from one pocket, finger through its contents, then tuck it away and rummage for another. He finally secured the fly he wanted and threaded it, laboriously, to the fine tippet.

His casts were beautiful. A flick, a roll, each perfectly executed – and not a hint of a lure at the end of his line. You could always recognize Elliot even from a distance, whether he was on the Penobscot’s West Branch, Kennebago, East Outlet or Grand Lake Stream.

My finest hour in the Elliot file occurred on a Sunday morning at West Grand Lake. It was mid-May and we were trolling for landlocked salmon. Coming into the cove fronting the late Carter White’s camp, a sudden snow blanketed the water and our windbreakers. The quick storm apparently awakened the salmon.

Alternate turns, casting toward the shoreline, resulted in something like 30 landlocks taking Paul Hoar’s single-hook Grand Lake Special, one of West Grand’s most productive artificials. Elliot claims, even today, that this one happenings remains one of his most exciting Maine angling experiences.

Bob and Annie Elliot now reside in Venice, Fla., 826 Baveno Drive.

“The warm weather is easier on the old bones,” laughs Bob. “That’s a helleva price to pay for living where there’s a definite lack of a Maine trout stream.”

Everyone, everywhere, has a talent. Robert O.E. Elliot’s talent thankfully lives on. Most of Bob Elliot’s writings, books and magazine articles are at the University of Maine in their archives.

He remains one of Maine’s unforgotten monuments.