Randy Spencer: The Maine Guide

Same woods, new snow

In this video, I return to the same place where I had previously walked along a stream deep in the woods. Eight inches of snow fell after that, however, so I wanted to show you how different things look after one storm.

 

Take a walk with me

 

This video was a spontaneous thought that popped up as I was hunting a beautiful stretch of woods along some no-name stream that comes from nothing in particular and eventually fizzles out into a swamp. You can hear how loud the brook can be in the otherwise quiet woods on a still, windless morning. Deer use these streams heavily in their movements both day and night. I just wanted to share the sounds and a woods-eye-view on this particular morning.

 

 

Squeaky wheel

Has this happened to you? In looking over a recent invoice from an Internet service provider, I noticed that there were two charges for $1 each that seemed to have nothing to do with the actual service. One was called “paper invoice” and the other “non-automated payment.” I happened to be in just the right mood to call the 1-800 customer service number, suffer the “please listen carefully as our menu options have changed” routine, and then be connected to a call center in India. You’re on hold just long enough to contemplate what the unemployment figures might be if the American company you're calling about hadn’t exported these jobs to India.

It was 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time in Maine, so it was 6:15 p.m. in India. After an exchange of pleasantries including, “How is your day going so far, sir?” designed to defuse whatever phone rage is about to be unleashed, she and I eventually got down to business. My business was to ask whether the two $1 charges on my bill were what they appeared to be: attempts to pass on to me the cost of sending me an invoice. And they were.

Rather than unleash a rant that would unfairly funnel many of life’s other pent-up frustrations into the ear of a customer-service innocent, I simply said, “That’s ridiculous,” and as soon as I said that, she said those fees would be removed from my bill. There was no argument, no discussion, just, “OK,” and now I don’t have to pay it. When I also said that, if in the future, those fees again showed up on my bills I still had no intention of paying them, the answer  was, “OK, that portion of your bill will be removed, sir.” 

So, the squeaky wheel does in fact get the grease. I couldn’t help but wonder how many other companies are charging me for the cost of sending me a bill and getting away with it. Pouring over the minutia on any invoice is low-quality time, but that’s exactly how they get away with the brazen act of charging you for charging you. I looked back over some past bills only to find that I had been paying this punitive fee (which punishes me for bringing my business to them) for months. One phone call ended the madness.

Like mother, like son

When Eric and Tae arrived with their daughter Lilly, barely a year old, they only had the word of Eric’s mother, Christine, to go on. She’s been coming to Grand Lake Stream for years and she undboubtedly has sung its praises to them. I remember when Christine used to struggle with fly fishing, determined not to give up or give in. Now she fly- casts better than many men I know.

This year, she was ready to share her special vacation haven with her family. And just to make the occasion more memorable, our first day of fishing coincided with the arrival in eastern Maine of Earl, the former hurricane now downgraded to a tropical storm. That downgrading did nothing to discourage Earl from delivering enough rain to sack any fishing trip, so I was prepared for Eric to cancel for the day right when we met at breakfast. I was impressed to find him instead asking to borrow a pair of rain pants. As we walked out the lodge door, Christine said, “Eric, I’d like to eat some pickerel for lunch if possible.” 

En route to a place somewhat protected from high winds, I tried to discover what Eric’s fishing history had been.  “I think I may have fished a little at summer camp in Oxford, Maine, when I was growing up,” he said. So, it looked as if we’d be starting from virtual scratch.

The skies opened up on us even as we launched the Grand Laker. Within minutes, I was into a syncopated routine of taking a paddle stroke, then bailing with a #10 Maxwell House coffee can. I did a quick casting demo, talked about likely targets like brush piles and overhanging hemlock limbs, then handed a rod over to Eric. He pulled his rain-jacket hood up over his head and hunkered down in the torrents to a steady rhythm of spin-casting.

Thirty minutes later, Eric’s casting mojo appeared just around the second bend in the river we were fishing. I found myself yelling out an involuntary “Wow!” when he landed a topwater lure inches away from a target he was identifying on his own. He was already good enough to go to subsurface lures, which can be more trouble to the novice simply because they sink as soon as they hit the water. Topwater was a good place to start, but the rain was so violent, no fish could discern a lure from the rest of the mayhem occurring on the surface. 

Around the third bend in the river, several pines hung their thickly needled limbs well out over the river. To my open-mouthed dismay, Eric sidearmed a subsurface lure up under the first limb within casting reach. Instantly, a fish struck and then released itself. I J-stroked the canoe to turn the bow into the current in order to give Eric another shot.  Again he sidearmed, skittering a cast back under the same limb. His quickly acquired skills were requieted this time.  A two-foot pickerel doubled his rod and thrashed up beside the canoe. “Christine’s got her pickerel,” was all I could say as I netted the impressive freshwater “gator.”

The afternoon brought the first signs of the next day’s weather: high pressure and wind! It didn’t matter, since Eric’s fishing mojo was already whetted. It didn’t faze Christine either, when she joined us on day two. She grew up fishing for trout in northwestern New Jersey and that was evident the second she picked up a rod. It was a sunny day with a stiff wind, but even that seemed like a reprieve compared to fishing in Earl. All that’s left, on some future trip, is to transfer that contagious mojo to Lilly. My guess is, with a fly-fisher grandmom and parents who’ve rediscovered the joys of fishing, the girl’s got a good shot.

The 'hump day' of summer

If Wednesday is the “hump day” of the work week, August 1st is the “hump date” of the summer for fishing guides. By then, we have worn the layers of May to fight the bite of 40-degree days, wind and rain. We negotiated the indecisive, unstable weather of June, changing into and out of long underwear, chamois shirts and rain gear. Then came the blistering heat of July, this past July more than most.

Now comes family vacation month. Already, the traffic on Route 9 with cargo carriers has increased. We call it “Thule Traffic.” These folks are looking for the cooler summer weather Maine has always been known for. There are few bugs around, wild berries are ripe or ripening, and lakes are as swimmable as Maine lakes ever get. That’s not to mention the fishing, which remains outstanding all summer.

In the past few weeks, making my guiding rounds on various bodies of water, I’ve seen spotted fawns traveling close behind their mothers; moose, including the drowned one shown here with a velvet antler protruding upward; an assortment of cats including a fisher; and numerous other critters such as beaver, muskrat, pine marten and more. I love it when a sport is a lightning rod for wildlife, eyes scanning in all directions all day long. That way, it’s not just the fishing that makes the day special, it’s everything!

One day two weeks ago, we saw 13 eagles over the same body of water. Once in a while for reasons that remain unclear, an eagle will do a fly-over so close you can count tail feathers. The problem is the lack of warning and people seldom have a camera ready.

I don’t know what killed the moose shown in the photo, floating in the mouth of a local stream where it empties into a lake. There was nothing obvious that gave away the cause. I have found other moose carcasses and sometimes have been able to piece together the cause of death. One had crashed through thin ice on a stream and couldn’t get out. Another stepped into thick, oozing mud and could not extract its legs. It bothers me when an animal so majestic is wasted in this way and when its expiration is not quick.

This week marks another Economic Summit at Leen’s Lodge, to be broadcast live this year on Bloomberg TV, and covered by Bloomberg Radio and Bloomberg print. Nineteen canoes will guide 38 economists on local waters. Noted financial analysts, CFOs, and wealth managers will convene once again to discuss the economy in the coming year in the decompressed environs of Grand Lake Stream. The weekend, known as “Camp Kotok,” owing to its founder, David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors, provides more guiding work for more guides than any single event at any sporting lodge for the entire season. It is somehow fitting that a large group of economists provides the local community with such a significant economic transfusion.

The hump date has come and gone, and the first arctic express blew through, probably turning over the lakes and confusing the fish. I’ve actually seen the first swamp maples turning those colors that send a chill up your spine. Can fall be far behind? Will school start back in a few weeks? Will we be changing into and out of long underwear again as we wear the layers of September? Summer is the short season and it goes by in a blur. For now though, and for as long as it lasts, we’ll just enjoy the lack of bugs, the blueberries and blackberries, the game sightings and the great fishing.

The gifted day

Give me a choice between rain and wind, and I’ll choose rain every time. Wetness can be negotiated. Wind cannot always be.

The first decisions of the guided fishing day happen long before sports ever meet up with their guide. They happen in front of a map after a NOAA weather broadcast, or after seeing an internet-generated satellite map of eastern Maine. What the wind will be doing will dictate where we will be. The wind is truly that: the dictator of the day, unless it’s asleep, and then you can get away with murder.

Yesterday, I had a day off. It was the first one in a long time, so of course there were duties and obligations competing for dance floor space in my brain. A day off. Sixteen waking hours, unless I snuck a nap in there, and then it might only be fifteen and a half. It already felt like I was getting away with something, just having this gifted day in the middle of the height of the guiding season.

Not only that. It was a rare nugget of a day. No rain, no wind. Did I really want to spend this day in banks or supermarkets or on some highway? One day off amid weeks of days on is almost too confusing. So, I exercised the antidote known to all my sports—I went fishing!

With no dictator looking over my shoulder, I took in the bottle-cap-calm lake and blew out a sigh of amazement. I could go anywhere and fish where I wanted to with no agitating wind messing with my cast or threatening to dash my hull on a rocky shoal.  

And that’s what I did—fished anywhere. I probed and spot-fished in places I’ve overlooked before. I noticed things that can’t be seen when the wind is up and the surface is broken. I mined the lake in ways unavailable to me when there’s a clock involved. I released one fish after another, but only after inspecting top and bottom mandibles for any scars from having been hooked previously. It tells me whether an area has received fishing pressure or not. There’s something very different about fishing for fish that have not been fished for. They’re wilder, and they convey this to you in your brief fracas with them.  

So, I got away with murder, without killing anything. To make the theft of this day even sweeter, I did in fact sneak in a nap. Right after that, I went back to fishing.

I’m telling you—you’ve got to try this. Steal away with a day all to yourself. Make it one when the only dictator of your next move is you. Not the wind, not the duties and obligations which will surely return after the overcrowded dance floor in your brain is cleared by a day on the water.  

Last night, just before falling asleep, I was out on the lake again. I mentally retraced the routes I’d taken into lonely coves, mesmerized by the underwater world of ledges and sunken logs. I made all those casts again, and saw once more the frothy eruptions of each strike. My last cast just before dozing off caught a thought: that the gifted day, or the day you steal if that’s what you have to do, is the gift that keeps on giving.

Off and running

June blew in on a powerful northwest wind that sent all the Grand Lakers scurrying away from big, open water, in search of lee shores and semblances of calm. That’s all there were: semblances. High, static barometric pressure bore down on the salmon and lake trout, putting them off the bite, but the bass were more forgiving. Just entering their most active season of the year––the spawn––they began to investigate likely bedding areas.

On June 1, the previous weather system, a “low,” had not yet passed. It was still overcast, misty, and the lake surface was, as they say, like a bottle cap. My sport was intent on finding the last of the salmon or togue “up top,” traveling behind schools of smelts, or picking off hatches of Hendrickson mayflies before rising water  temperatures drove these gamefish to the depths.  

He saw a rise and pointed. “There!” I looked, but all that was left was a spherical imprint on the mirrored, mill pond surface. I turned the boat so that the Governor Aiken fly he was trolling would pass nearer the fray. Our conversation continued. Moments later, his fly rod nearly flew out of his hand. A fish was hooked—that’s all either of us knew, but from the outset, the fish was winning.  

Behind the 30 yards of sinking fly line is a mile of backing. Well, it seems like a mile. This fish was into the backing in a flash, yanking, pulling, but not showing. A wide smile stretched across the face of my fisherman, and right behind it was the face of fear. How wonderful to feel this force. How terrible to consider losing it.

It turned out just fine. A lucky netting on my part, some good photo ops on his. As that early season highlight gave a good start to the bustle of business on its way, the weather took another dive. It’s been a story of wind or rain ever since, with that precious day of calm wedged in between every once in a while.

I know it’s bass season now because the McCandlish brothers are back in force. At the end of each day, we may not remember the exact number of fish caught, but we’ll certainly recall the things we talked about. Almost nothing will be safe from our collective analysis.

I’ve taken a couple of river trips so far, and the current is impressive. Paddling is replaced by ruddering. You know because you feel a separate set of muscle groups at the end of the day. A sport has one chance at casting to a passing target. There’s no going back. A fish is not so much landed as towed to the boat. The scenery goes by so quickly, it must be freeze framed to remember.

Just like that river current, the season is off and running. I’m already impressed by the number of folks who have asked after the wellbeing of Drummond Humchuck. He’s my reclusive friend who garnered more notoriety than he bargained for when my book, Where Cool Waters Flow, appeared last fall. He’s fine, though we’re now in that longest stretch of the year when we’re wanting for each other’s company. For him, it’ll be his many pursuits, both vocational and avocational, to tide him over. For me, it’ll be the McCandlish brothers and other good fishing company in the weeks and months ahead.

Waking dreams

With Memorial Day in sight—the day that marks the unofficial beginning of summer around here—summer, and even spring, have been unreliable guests so far this season. If you like unpredictability, this time’s for you. Forty degrees one day, 80 the next––it leaves even the fish confused.

Sports have begun arriving at lodges, though not in the numbers of June. It’s been great seeing them, all full of vim for fishing “up top.” What they mean by this is that they’ll be using fly rods with sinking lines and a choice from among the favorties in their fly book. Pink Ladies, Grey Ghosts, Silver Doctors, Supervisors, Mickey Finns, and Joe Smelts, as well as lots of homemade incarnations stemming from these classic patterns.

The sinking line and relatively short leader bring the fly down four or five feet below the lake’s surface, depending on the hull speed of the boat. This is a good place to be when surface temperatures are still hovering close to 50.      

Last week, fishing action was occurring is reverse syncopation to fair weather. Bluebird days were wonderful for sightseeing and soulful contemplation, but not for pull-backs. As soon as systems rolled in with temps harkening back to April, this changed—and fast. Wind, referred to in this sport as “a good salmon chop” came with rain, and a chill that got through the Gore-Tex. It’s the perfect recipe for salmon and lake trout fishing.

One day when my partner guide and I had four sports out in the rain, both of us found hot spots. Every pass yielded a fish or at least a strike. My friend, working just off a point of land in shallow water, put his sports onto some young salmon, possibly last year’s spring yearlings in the 12- to 14-inch range. The sport sitting amidships hooked into one of these on a fly rod. When he had played the fish within six or eight feet of the boat, a tremendous togue took the salmon into its gaping maw. The swirl of this monster startled the guide so much that he stood up. The sport reacted with a fast yank, but instead of hooking the trophy, he simply pulled the young salmon out of its mouth. The sighs were followed by a silence of palpable pain.

Those are the moments that keep ‘em coming back. They also provide the source material for waking images that float before the eyes late at night in mid-February.

A corker of a story

From the Northwoods Sporting Journal by Randy Spencer:

If you love to hate stories about land-grabbers vs. natives, or park proponents vs. traditional use and access, well, this story isn’t one of those. It’s a corker just the same.

An investment group called GLS Woodlands LLC bought 22,000 acres around Grand Lake Stream just over a year ago. They are represented by a New Hampshire forestlands investment company, Lyme Timber of Hanover.

Lyme made a deal with the local Downeast Lakes Land Trust to sell the 22,000 acres to them seven years down the road as conservation easements. This made big press. It meant that the natural resources the local economy relies upon could be preserved. Guided sporting and the summer population are the twin towers of Grand Lake Stream’s not-so-towering economy.

The town voted for it and even put up some money. The Guides Association did the same. The 33 leaseholders who would be affected by the deal were happy, too. Most knew that leasing wasn’t forever—that one day they might get a shot at a deed and a title.

They got a shot all right. Six months after the deal was celebrated in Bangor with the signature blessings of Governor Baldacci, U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and  Olympia Snowe, and Reps. Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree, a letter from GLS Woodlands was received by those camp owners. The  good news: Their lease lots could at last be purchased.The bad news: The price was two to three times fair market value.

The price the land trust would pay to GLS Woodlands per acre in seven  years was already set at $1,000/acre. The price for these lease lots was roughly $100,000/acre. And just to tighten the vice, GLS Woodlands LLC was demanding a response in 60 days. Incidentally, there was a recession going on at the time.

A special meeting was called at Town Hall where dazed camp owners from in and out of state convened to share the shock and hatch a plan. In a democratic sequence Thomas Paine could’ve been proud of, a delegation was voted to represent the group. Cool heads and rational dialogue would surely prove fruitful.

The first thing the delegation learned was that Lyme Timber wouldn’t talk to them. This was something like not being able to face your accuser (GLS Woodlands) or your accuser’s lawyer (Lyme Timber).

Twelve of the camp owners got independent appraisals on their own. The results uniformly showed tremendous disparity between asking price and fair market price. As one of the camp owners put it, “We’ve always known that one day we’d be expected to purchase our lot and we’ve prepared for that, but this is unreasonable ... ” The 12 went on to get the 60-day deadline relaxed by 60 more days with the help of legal counsel.

Then, in an effort to save their camps, they made the tough decision to pad their appraisals by an average of $30,000 each and make counteroffers to GLS Woodlands LLC. Lyme Timber once again responded for them: No thank you, and by the way, your lease is going up and your lot is going on the open market.

The lease lots matter to the community for two major reasons. One is, without the camp owner community and guided sporting, there is no economy in Grand Lake Stream. I just spent three years researching and writing a book on the region and nothing could be clearer. Remove significant parts of that economic foundation and you undermine everything, with destructive consequences.

Second, these are the region’s remotest camps, known in old lease lot language as “primitive camp sites.” There are no improved roads, no utilities. Four of the area’s oldest guide sites are among them, one hosting for decades famed WWII aviator, Medal of Honor recipient, and sport fisherman James “Jimmy” Doolittle. Seven miles by water from town, it and others like it remain in service today as guiding base camps, important stopovers for the recreational clientele, and guides’ lunch sites. If they’re lost, available guide sites on West Grand Lake alone are reduced by over half.

Normal avenues of negotiation having failed, the leaseholders scanned the horizon for allies. The Downeast Lakes Land Trust was a given. True, they were partnered with Lyme/GLS Woodlands, but their published mission was to “protect the economy of the Grand Lake Stream community in central Washington County.” As the private struggle of the leaseholders turned public this spring, Mark Berry, executive director of the land trust made a disclosure that left the leaseholders stunned. In a March 24 Bangor Daily News op-ed, he wrote of the land deal, “The option provides DLLT the right to purchase all of the GLS Woodlands property, except for the 33 lease lots ... ” and, “These lots are not subject to the option agreement with DLLT ... ”       

It meant that 33 bulwarks to the local economy and proven stewards of conservation had apparently been excluded from the 22,000-acre option so that GLS Woodlands could deal directly with the leaseholders. Surrounded on all sides by lands destined for the trust, lands they had custodianed for generations, they were now the cash cow that sweetened the deal with GLS Woodlands.
      
It forced the leaseholders to the question—did Mark Berry negotiate with this knowledge? Did the deal hinge upon it? Were the intentions of GLS Woodlands known when the governor and other high-profile politicians lent their names to the project? It was a tough pill to swallow for the lease tenants, most of whom had cheered the land trust along. Now, in their hour of need, they heard little more than a faint, “Good luck” from Downeast Lakes Land Trust. It was a moment when silence spoke volumes.

Finally, it brought the leaseholders to the question, does GLS Woodlands LLC even know what is being wrought on their behalf by Lyme Timber? Such investment groups often include corporate interests and university endowments. Would they approve if the return on their investment was founded on the unfair treatment of leaseholders whose absence would threaten a stressed local economy? It is difficult even now to believe that Downeast Lakes Land Trust would plead powerless and sanction the forcing of these historic leases into default.


If this story needs a punch line, it is this: In the GLS Woodlands purchase and sale agreement mailed to leaseholders, an attachment listed suggested lenders. One leaseholder took the bait and applied for a conventional bank loan to buy his lease lot. The bank, with no dog in this hunt, ordered a bank appraisal as required. The result:  the bank appraisal came in $75,000 lower than GLS Woodlands’ price. The bank was one of GLS Woodlands’ “suggested lenders.”

Mentors, awards, and spring fishing news

It’s been very busy lately, just like it always is during the weeks leading up to the guiding season.  Lots of boat work, trailer work, motor work, and tasks specific to the season.  There’s something else coming up too, only I wouldn’t really call it a “chore.” 

For a full week in early May, I’ll be mentoring a high school student from Ohio.  He’s a senior, bound for graduation soon after he returns home from Maine.  As part of the credits he needs for graduation, he, along with his senior classmates, had to write an outline and a plan for a mentoring program.  It would include a description and overview of the student’s chosen idea as well as a list of objectives.  If it was approved, it was then sent to the proposed mentor for add-on ideas, more overview, more planning.  That’s if the mentor accepted. 

Accepting was easy since I’d never been so flattered.  If this had been on the curriculum when I was in high school, I would’ve jumped at it!  Leo Sideras from Novelty, Ohio, wrote in his senior prospectus that he wanted to be taught-tutored-mentored in an array of outdoor skills needed in the everyday working life of a Maine guide. 

At first I thought––sweet!  An assistant to help scrape, sand and paint boat bottoms!  It was a short-lived rush.  You don’t need a guide’s license to run the palm sander or apply spar varnish.  Instead, I’ve been applying myself to that stuff so that when Leo arrives, we can dive into some of the skills of the guiding trade.  I’m looking forward to it, and if I weren’t guiding in June, I’d show up in Novelty, Ohio for a very special graduation. 

Amid this busy work of the season, some nice news arrived.  My editor, Amy, from Islandport Press, keeps a low flame under me so that I’ll keep readers informed about what’s going on.  “That’s what your blog site is for!” she reminds me often.  The 2010 Maine Literary Awards were just announced, and “Where Cool Waters Flow” was awarded an Honorable Mention in the non-fiction category.  There will be an awards ceremony at University of Southern Maine, but I’ll be mentoring that day so will not be able to make a trip to Portland.  Someone also wrote that they had seen the book on a “Maine Best Seller” list on Easter Sunday.  Several times each week I hear from people who have made some special connection as a result of reading “Cool Waters.”  To me, that means it was worth writing. 

I also want to recognize the folks who follow this blog site and to those who write something in the “comments” section.  I’m one of a group of people struggling to save their camps in or near Grand Lake Stream, and the theme here is that sometimes conservation has a dark side.  The story is in previous blogs here and coming out in other publications soon.  Never a dull moment! 

The fishing reports from the entire West Grand Lake drainage system are outstanding -- once you get past the frost bite, that is.  So much water has been drawn down through the gates of the West Grand dam that places like Bottle Stream in the upper reaches of the system actually have low water for this time of the season.  With no snow pack melting and very little rain over all, it will have to be made up, and soon.  Here’s to those hearty souls who have braved the waves and the wind these past weeks.  Hopefully, you had some salmon or togue to show for your grit.