The antonym of "ebb" is ...............??
Extra credit..........."Name 4 recording artists who recorded the song that is reminiscent of the answer to Question #4."
hag in there. The fishing is picking up and this discount is just what your fall fishing will need. gmg
...You know how you behave when you are home alone and someone important is coming to visit? I catch myself walking by the window that overlooks the driveway. Now it's the opposite window that has my attention, the one that looks out onto the bay which has been frozen since last October, or so it seems. Each day a bit more white is gone and more blue appears. The ice shanty I used this winter has been pulled up on shore, again just in time. Last year at least 5 knotheads left their camps on the ice WAY too long and they floated away. One with a heavy woodstove inside didnt go far and was recovered from the bottom.
This is always an exciting time of year in Maine. As the ice thins and recedes from the bays, lakes and ponds, Mainers scramble to remove their ice fishing camps before they either float away down river or sink quietly in the night. You can just imagine the words spoken in the truck as the fisherman rounds the corner and looks up the bay to where his camp WAS located all winter, only to see blue water.
Those very same words were uttered last week, for certain. A logging truck was removing freshly cut pine logs from a waterfront. The operator was driving the loaded truck (30 tons worth, I'd guess) across the pond. We shouldn't delight in the misfortunes of others, but I wish that I could have seen that AND the second act...the big excavator that drove onto the ice for the truck rescue also bought the drink.
Last year when a F-150 went through the ice, the driver was quoted to have said, "That's the last time I do that with a NEW pickup."
I'll be punished for this...my boat will slide off the trailer without the drain plug in place. You wait and see.
Capt. Gordon Gillies
www.mainestripers.com
When do you get off the river? I can think of two circumstances that drive me to shelter: a) Lightning ( a boat is not a car) and b) When a tug boat steams the river (they throw more wake than a destroyer). Other?
Capt. Gordon Gillies
www.mainestripers.com
The annual royal visit went well. The former Mohiba Queen (Morse High Ball) has cruised from Bath to Popham and waved to the crowds on shore. She caught a striped bass with nearly every well placed cast. This bodes well for those of us fishermen who live in this domain. Long live the Queen!
Capt. Gordon Gillies
www.mainestripers.com
Maybe I should wait until I know what I am blogging about, but let me ask a question. Is the Squirrel Point Lighthouse still for sale? This amazing piece of real estate, complete with keepers house, boat house and land was on the market last year for an amazingly low price and I believe, with a coventant...that the property be held open to the public for at least part of the week. I'll be back with the answer unless someone beats me to it.
Capt. Gordon GilliesI remember standing in line waiting to buy tickets at the entrance of Disneyworld. My wife and 8 year old daughter waited with me. As the queue moved slowly forward I sensed movement down by my side. I looked and saw my daughter Alex literally shaking from head to toe. Her movements resembled a fevered dance I might have seen in a Tarzan movie…some exotic disease was striking the natives. I looked next to my wife and my expression must have mirrored my thoughts. The wise one, she who must be obeyed, replied with the calm of the doctor who has lived in the jungle for years and has seen and diagnosed it all. “She’s ok. It’s just the anticipation.”
Every keen fishermen knows, then, just what my daughter felt and what Peter and I experienced back on May 26th.
We were dining with Peter’s wife Sarah at Spinney’s Restaurant which is perched remarkably at the very edge of the dunes of Popham Beach, and right at the mouth of our Kennebec River. Before our eyes, just feet from the window, at least 20 osprey danced in the air and dove into the shallows. Right there in front of us these amazing aerialists were hurtling into the surf and catching small stripers and, we believe, large alewives. Bam. Bam. Bam. One after another they hurtled into the water. Our grilled haddock grew cold, it was so enthralling a show. Maybe we weren’t visibly quaking, but we were excited.
The next morning, way early in the season, the water still very cold and murky, we were in that same spot, in the boat, throwing lures and flies in every direction. The season begins. We have our tickets. Have you yours?
Capt. Gordon GilliesEagles
During the winter we read about our environment and the species that have now returned to keep us company. The news could be seen as foreshadowing trouble if we didn’t witness also, over and over, the amazing resilience of nature.
As you know, the Bald Eagle is now carried on both the State and Federal Threatened Species List. The national bird has been placed there because numbers of nesting pairs is rising…at a rate of about 10% per year. There were only 20 some pairs in the 70’s and now that number approaches 300 statewide. This past spring, however, the birthrate in Maine dropped and the State biologist theorizes that it was due to the very cold weather during the months when birds hatch. In our area, however, several pairs delivered new hatchlings.
How do they keep track? By plane. Which isn’t that tricky when you consider that nests can be 20 feet deep, weigh tons and are used over and over (usually until the several tons of weight topple the very tree that supports it).
Ask your guide to tell of the pair who dropped from the sky, talons locked, and fell into the Androscoggin River to be rescued by locals. Or about the gent who retuned home to find a mature and injured eagle (7 foot wingspan) sitting in his kitchen.
Eels
Safe to say, not a symbol for any nation, the American Eel, is struggling. This intrepid critter that migrates all the way from the Sargasso Sea (make that Bermuda), might be fighting for its survival. Numbers have dropped sharply at the northern edge of its migratory territory, and dams and over-fishing are the likely causes. A twelve-month study has begun to determine if the eel belongs on the Endangered Species List. Stay tuned for further news about this favorite striped bass food.
Egrets
Good news…there are Snowy Egrets in our watershed and your guide can (usually…if the tide is right) take you within binocular viewing distance. These brilliantly white birds are shy but they can be seen from a great distance as they feed among the dark green vegetation in the marshes.
Both Gillies and Fallon are devoted to the watershed where we work.We are active members of the appropriate environmental non-profits. We support and teach “catch and release”. We use circle or barbless hooks wherever possible. Even the engines on our boats are chosen for clean burning of fuel.
Capt. Gordon Gillies
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