Outdoor experiences in Maine bring pens to hands

Midweek Mail: You wouldn’t be cutting any slack if you said Gerald Lewis prefers pine-needled trails to pavement. Every now and then, the Garland resident offers an outdoors anecdote that, I’m sure, brings smiles to the faces of many sportsmen.

For example: “Stanley Pierce’s many friends will be glad to learn that he has recovered his teeth. The veteran Aroostook County outdoorsman had lost his upper plate when he and his wife, Jacki, dumped their canoe in mid-July.

“I learned of Stan’s problem a short while ago when my stepson, Paul Rosenblum, and I went up to the camp my brother Duane and I have in Twp. 8, R4. Stan explained that he and Jacki thought they’d take a trip down St. Croix Stream on a high pitch of water. They misread a chute at the Rips, over went the canoe, and the couple suddenly found themselves so they could `drink standing up.’ Stan’s choppers were expelled when he blew for air, and they they, along with a couple of other items, remained somewhere at the bottom of the Rips.

“Since the water had dropped considerably, I proposed that we try to find them; so with Paul and Stan paddling, Yours Truly ensconced in the middle, we retraced the fateful route. The weather was marvelous, and we were rewarded with abundant sightings of wildlife along the way – ducks, herons, kingfishers, deer, cow and calf moose, and a magnificent eagle viewed at very close range.

“When we got to the spot where the Pierce’s had gone loop-de-loo, we pulled the bow of our canoe up onto the shore; Paul stripped down to his shorts and plunged into the water. Shortly, he surfaced with a sneaker, the mate to which Stan had taken back to camp for his new rabbit hound pup, `Blue,’ to play with. That was encouraging; we knew we were in the right place. Then after several more dives, up comes Paul with Stan’s sheathed cruising axe – soggy handle, little rust on the blade, but perfectly all right.

“I had stripped down, too, but confess to being so disconcerted by little fishes nibbling on my bare bod that I was of little help in the search. Mostly, I just floundered around. After about 10 minutes of underwater exploration, Paul climbed onto a big rock to take a break. And looking down at the base of it, he spied something pink gleaming in the current. He slipped off the rock, made one more dive, and, Yippee!, he had Stan’s denture. The three of us shared a most exciting and gratifying moment.

“So. All’s well that ends well; and that ended well indeed. None of us would like to think that ol’ Stan would have any difficulty with those deer steaks that he’ll undoubtedly set out on the camp table come November.”

Time will never tarnish the memories made in Maine’s great outdoors.

Fred Eaton Jr., a sportsman who camps in Millinocket, is concerned about the impact that Atlantic salmon fry stockings may have on the Penobscot River watershed’s wild brook trout populations. He wrote: “I realize we can continue to have trout fishing in lakes and ponds because stocking there is practical; however, stocking of rivers and streams does not work.

“Unfortunately, our general fishing regulations are skewed against brook trout. Atlantic salmon are fully protected, landlocked salmon have a 14-inch minimum and two-per-day limit, bass a three-per-day limit plus size brackets, while brook trout are five-per-day and a 6-inch limit.

“This general law penalty over a period of time and the excessive stocking of Atlantic salmon fry in the Penobscot watershed will shortly make wild native brook trout fishing a thing of the past. If you would please talk to our fishery biologists I think they have a solution to saving trout and providing Atlantic salmon fishing.

“I understand that stocking smolts in the Bangor area would provide better results for salmon fishing and eliminate the salmon fry dumping approach that crowds out our native brook trout. Obviously, I am not a great writer but I hope I have conveyed my great concern. Destruction of habitat, overfishing, overstocking of salmon fry, and laws not favoring brook trout are the problems. We must wake up to the fact that very soon our rivers and streams will have no more wild trout.”

There’s no slack in Mr. Eaton’s cast and I respect him for expressing his opinion on this controversial matter. He made some strong points. I have no idea what the Penobscot watershed’s carrying capacity is relative to brook trout and Atlantic salmon fry, parr, and smolts coexisting.

Habitat competition is, of course, the problem. Obviously, the two species coexisted in the Penobscot and its tributaries long before the white man made tracks in this territory, but the fish did so according to nature’s plan, not man’s.

Although I’m involved with Atlantic salmon restoration to the Penobscot River, I would not want to see the restoration program depleting the river’s wild trout fishery. Frankly, I don’t see any reason for that. I say that because I have caught trout in every salmon river I ever fished. In fact, while fishing in Labrador, I cursed trout for taking dry flies cast for salmon. The two species are compatible.

The solution to the problem Mr. Eaton points out depends on fisheries biologists determining the number of Atlantic salmon fry that can be stocked in the river without jeopardizing brook trout populations. You may know that Maine’s Atlantic Salmon Commission has discontinued smolt stockings in favor of fry stockings, which produce fish better suited for survival in the wild.

Conflict and controversy. There’s no end to it nowadays.