Out and About: A few minutes before beginning this column, I had my English pointer, “Dunc,” out for his morning run. In a strip of sumac sprawling between my house and Phil Johnson’s place, the busy pointer slowed and made one of those abrupt birdy checks. Simultaneously, a woodcock twittered skyward between us.

What a welcome sight that was. You can talk about robins returning and smelts running and ice getting gray, but there’s no surer sign of spring than a woodcock rising from a cover musty with the smells of old winter and early spring.

On a recent tour that started in the Sunkhaze Stream area of Milford, swung through a section of the Airline, and ended along the flooded flowages of Souadabscook Stream in Newburgh, I found fishermen few and far between. Needless to say, the water was high, roily, and often cluttered with ice.

Ken Goss, a Maine guide who makes his den in Otis, had an interesting opening-day story. He struck for the brooks boiling through the Airline country and was making tracks on a trail handy to Hopkins Pond when he noticed a movement ahead. Directly, a wild turkey stepped onto the trail.

“At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” said Ken. “Then I heard something behind me and turned to see two more turkeys a short distance away. I’d say they were toms, they had dark shiny feathers, almost like a raven’s, and big birds, too. They didn’t seem nervous at all, they just walked off down the hill and into the woods.”

Ken couldn’t find an accommodating trout on his opening-day tour that also took him into the Spectacle and Rocky ponds territory and across the Airline to King and Rift ponds. He said the thoroughfare between King and Rift was still iced in. It takes a little time – and warm weather.

Warden Bob Brown of Grand Lake Stream didn’t work that popular landlocked salmon water on opening day. Instead, he patrolled Monroe Pond, a popular early trout pool located in Township 43. Bob said there were only patches of water open along the shores, which drop off quickly. But, he reported, the fishermen he checked had their limits of two trout each “and they were beauties, too.” It’s hard to figure, isn’t it? Some waters have to warm up before they produce fish, yet others will give up limits as soon as a sheet of ice splits a seam.

Bob Gagner, the head guide at the Pine Tree Store in Grand Lake Stream, said there were 28 fishermen in the stream’s “Dam Pool” when he pulled on his waders at 5:30 a.m. of opening day. A short distance downstream, four cars were parked at the “Hatchery Pool.”

Bob, who I fished with last spring, said some of the salmon addicts began flailing the water as soon as the second hands of their watches swept past midnight. From what I gathered, few fly rods were bent to their tasks on opening day at Grand Lake Stream; but, as you know, that can change in one cast. Keep fishin’.

Once the association is established, one of its first challenges will be the matter of a fish-passage facility at the Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. dam in Ellsworth. Perhaps you know A fish trap for collecting Atlantic salmon broodstock was constructed at the dam in 1974. Although Bangor Hydro contributed to the trap’s construction, it was built as a Federal Aid anadromous fish restoration project and is owned by the ASRSC. An employee of the city of Ellsworth currently transports alewives from the trap to upstream spawning areas.

When the Ellsworth dam was relicensed by the FERC in 1987, one of its requirements was construction of a fishway. Obviously, that requirement hasn’t been met. Accordingly, Gordon Beckett, supervisor of New England Field Offices for the U.S. Dept. of the Interior, wrote in a recent letter to Bangor Hydro Director of Environmental Services Kathleen Billings: “…There is a lengthy record documenting the need for permanent fish passage facilities at the Ellsworth project. Current fishery management objectives still call for the building of fishways at the project dams.

“The use of trap-and-transport on a permanent basis is not a reasonable alternative to the construction of fish passage facilities. Plans for modification of the Graham Lake Dam (the Bangor Hydro-owned dam located at the outlet of Graham lake) should be integrated with those for building a new fishway so that the work can be accomplished concurrently. There is no reason to modify agency prescriptions for permanent fish-passage facilities at the Ellsworth project, other than to accelerate the construction schedule for a fishway at Graham Lake Dam.”

My understanding is that Dept. of the Interior laws requiring fishways in dams were written in 1920. Obviously, those laws have been circumvented or ignored for a long time. Fortunately, that time has passed.

If you have an interest in Atlantic salmon restoration and the Union River in particular, by all means attend tonight’s meeting in Ellsworth. The directors of the new association also will cast around for an official title. Any ideas?