Fishermen need patience to hook togue

Call it deja vu: Decades ago I departed on fishing trips to Green Lake by riding down South Brewer’s Pendleton Street in the company of the late Carroll Soucie. I was in my teens at the time. A couple of weeks ago I again rode down Pendleton Street, departing for Green Lake, in the company of Carroll Soucie’s son-in-law, John Hodgins. Rather than let out a lot of line on the subject I’ll just say Carroll was our guide and leave it at that.

Truth be told, I’ve always figured I was blessed with a touch of beginner’s luck when, back in the early 1950s, Carroll and several other “south end” Sports took the time to show me where the bear went in the buckwheat. However, in looking back at it all I have to say that when it came to all-around ability Carroll was the hands-down “head guide.” You name it – hunt, fish, trap, train dogs, make decoys, tinker with outboards, tack a new canvas to a canoe, repair a reel, build a camp – Carroll could do it. Further to that, his inventiveness didn’t go unnoticed: The plumbing systems and holding tanks for lobsters that he designed and built at Cap Morrill’s Restaurant and lobster pound in South Brewer attracted attention from far and wide.

If “Soose,” as Carroll was known among his peers, preferred one type of fishing, though, it was trolling for togue. Although I only fished togue (lake trout) with him a few times I learned that trolling a bottom- bumper spoon and a sewn-on smelt behind lead-core line at depths that varied continually and often abruptly was a skill attained by relatively few fishermen. Particularly before the advent of electronic depth finders. But even now, with all the fish-taker technology, successful togue fishermen seem to have a special touch – call it a developed sense – that tells them when their spoons and baits are fishing just right in, say, 60 feet of water.

Conversely, on memorable trips to Green Lake Carroll and I trolled on top for landlocked salmon as soon as the ice went out. At that time there were no togue in Green, which was one of only four Maine lakes that nurtured native populations of landlocks. The others were Sebago, Sebec and West Grand.

Not until 1961, when Green Lake’s salmon fishery was practically past tense – the decimation of the lake’s smelt population was a factor – were togue stocked in the Hancock County fishing ground. Thus, the lake that was the mother lode for landlocks hereabouts became a productive togue fishery. And Carroll Soucie wasn’t long in figuring out where to fish for the deep-dwelling “lakers.” Thus, when John Hodgins, married Carroll’s daughter, Linda, he became privy to his father-in-law’s findings.

Handy to 8 a.m., shafts of sunlight filtered through shrouds of fog lifting from the lake. There wasn’t a breath of breeze. “Just right for togue fishing,” John allowed as we launched his 15-foot Lund boat. “Made to order,” I answered. “No rocking and rolling to keep us out of touch today.”

The trick in togue fishing is to keep the rod tip nodding steadily to the slow turning of the spoon. If the spoon touches bottom the rod tip stops, signaling the fisherman to reel up quickly. Usually it takes only a few turns for the spoon to resume sending its rhythmical message that the bait trailing a few feet behind is fishing, not foundering.

On windy days, however, rods dip and bend with wave action, making it nearly impossible to tell if the tip is nodding. Naturally, that translates to hanging up and possibly losing gear. If you don’t already know, you can imagine how aggravating it is to have a spoon and carefully sewn bait trolling nicely behind eight colors or so of lead-core line and then have it all come to an abrupt rod-bending, reel-running, hung-up halt. That, of course, means reeling it all up, if it comes free, that is, and sewing on another bait. Accordingly, when a fish hits a bait and doesn’t get hooked or a bait “touches up” without hanging up it has to be reeled in and checked to make sure it isn’t damaged or trailing weeds. Obviously, the calmer the lake, the better the conditions for dredging togue.

In short order, John had the 15-horse outboard running at a full gallop. After skimming past the sandbar and through the narrows he throttled back handy to a small island. With the motor idling, we sewed on frozen smelts that John dipped this spring. More of the Soucie School, I thought, recalling that Carroll always froze enough smelts to keep him in bait throughout the fishing season. Equally remindful was John’s bait needle. Made from fine piano wire it matched the half dozen or so in my tackle box. All of which were made in Foster’s Sports Shop in South Brewer a long time ago by none other than Carroll Soucie. For those who never had the pleasure of patronizing the late Foster Ellis’s establishment, let me assure you that if you weren’t a Sport when you went in, you were when you came out. And that’s all I’ll say on that subject.

Pointing to an island that appeared to be about a mile away, John said, “There’s a ridge running between these islands. We’ll fish off this side of it … 40 to 50 feet of water most of the way. All set?”

“Let’s do it.”

Here I have to explain that when I fetched my togue rig from the garage that morning I thought about replacing the attached spoon with a smaller one. Crimping the edges of a smaller spoon with pliers, a la Soucie, ensures that the spoon will turn when trolled slowly. The slower the better, in fact, for the lethargic lakers. Nevertheless, I left the spoon on and soon wished I hadn’t. With its greater surface area, it had more resistance to the water than the smaller crimped spoon John was using; which meant that although we were fishing the same amount of line my spoon wasn’t reaching bottom. Consequently, I had to let out more line before I felt, literally, that I was fishing. You’d think that lowering a bait a bit more wouldn’t make a difference to a hungry togue, but it does.

Obviously, trolling for togue requires patience, concentration and experience. “As calm as it is and as slow as we’re moving” – only a wrinkle of wake showed behind the boat – “we’ll get about six feet to a color,” John said as we checked the slow-rolling action of our baits and started letting out line, but not too fast. When I mentioned that free-spooling lead-core line off a reel courts kinks and snarls, my fishing partner chuckled and nodded. He didn’t have to say that he too had learned that lesson the hard way.

“Carroll was real fussy about lines,” John recalled. “He swore by Ashaway. I thought he was going to cry when they went out of business.” Eventually, our discussion about lead- core lines led to the oft-argued subject of how much depth each color of line provides. For the uninitiated, the color of a lead-core line changes every 30 feet, allowing fishermen to measure the amount they let out. Five feet per color seems to be the accepted average. But as John pointed out, owing to the dead-calm conditions we got about 6 feet.

Further to the subject of line depth is the argument dealing with density: That is, which line descends faster, 36-pound test or 18-pound test? If memory serves me, Carroll preferred 18-pound test. He figured the smaller diameter line had less resistance, therefore it descended faster than the denser, heavier test line. Allowing that the lead core of both lines is the same – the difference in density and test being in the line itself – I’ll stick with Soose on that.

Wind, even a breeze, is a factor in keeping a bait on bottom: Fishing into it or with it requires adjustments in motor speed to keep lines tracking instead of bagging and fouling. And if you’ve been there, done that, you know it takes a certain touch on the throttle. In that regard my fishing partner recalled, “If I was running the motor and Carroll didn’t think his spoon was turning just right he wasn’t long in taking the tiller. I can hear him now, ‘If those baits aren’t on bottom all we’ll get is a boat ride.'” To all appearances, a togue fisherman slouched in a slow-moving boat looks like he’s not doing much of anything. But considering all of the aforementioned, he’s the exemplar of the adage, “Looks are deceiving.”

So it went, the outboard trolled down to where you could count the strokes of the pistons, spoons turning and tugging, touching bottom and reeling in, not touching and letting out, rod tips nodding and stopping and starting, feeling, talking, togue fishing. The day was nearly an hour older when John’s rod bowed and began dancing a jig. The ensuing tug of war ended a few minutes later when I eased the net under a togue that we guesstimated to weigh a healthy 5 pounds. As judge and jury we acquitted the fish of its folly and set it free.

Then came part two of the big-spoon saga: About half an hour after John’s togue went back to pumping Green Lake through its gills, I felt a solid tap but no subsequent tugging. “Fish?” John asked as I took a couple of turns on the Sal-Trout reel, feeling only the rod-bending resistance of the spoon. “Guess not,” I answered. “Must’ve touched up. Better check my bait.” When all but a couple of colors were back on the reel I noticed the angle of the line increasing, moving downward. A fish after all, by God. Apparently, after taking the bait the togue swam forward instead of turning and then followed along as I began reeling. Had I changed to a smaller spoon I surely would have felt the fish, whose net weight we figured at 4 pounds. It too was released.

By then the sunlight spilling from a hazy-blue sky was so hot you could smell it. With sweat dripping off his chin, John said suggestively, “Whatta y’ think?”

“I think we’ve had a morning that a lot of people would pay a lot of money for,” I concurred. “Let’s call it good and give this pool a rest.”

While driving home we talked about hunting, fishing, rods, reels, guns, dogs, boats, canoes, development, posted land, the bear referendum and, of course, Carroll Soucie as I knew him early on and John knew him later on. It was an interesting and insightful conversation about a multi-talented man who refused to take life or himself seriously. If ever there was a free spirit and a good sport it was Soose. In my mind he’ll always be one of South Brewer’s finest. Small wonder that while driving down Pendleton Street after leaving John’s house I could hear a familiar voice saying, “You guys did all right for a couple of amateurs.”

Rather than let out a lot of line on the subject I’ll just say we had a good guide and leave it at that.

Tom Hennessey’s columns and artwork can be accessed on the BDN internet page at www.bangornews.com. Tom’s e-mail address is: thennessey@bangordailynews.net. Web site address is: www.tomhennessey.com.