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Weekly Fishing Roundup 6/11/07 DOWNEAST

June 11, 2007 - DOWNEAST

If you love bass fishing, the bass are biting well now! Both smallmouth and largemouth bass are highly active, with juveniles feeding heavily and with adults spawning. Males dependably and dutifully remain by the nest to guard eggs and fry from fish-eating predators. When male bass are removed from the nest, even temporarily, as when anglers catch and release them, this interruption in diligent nest defense can result in high levels of predation on the eggs and fry in just a few minutes. Anglers are strongly encouraged to play and release male bass quickly in the immediate vicinity of the nest; it will pay dividends for your future bass fishing!

The fisheries staff of the Downeast Region is currently sampling bass from Graham Lake in the Ellsworth area and Georges Pond in Franklin to monitor size and age composition of the bass populations. The information we have collected during the past 21 years from more than 7,000 bass has been highly valuable in implementing regulations to preserve and protect the quality of eastern Maine’s bass populations, which occur in 613 of Maine’s lakes and ponds.

Try bass fishing! You’ll find it to be the way fishing should be.

Another of Maine’s favorite warmwater fish species, the white perch, is spawning now. Campowners on several eastern Maine lakes have reported seeing schools of perch swimming close to shore recently.

For the second consecutive year, eastern Maine biologists and wardens have clearly noted an improvement in the number of 10-12” trout in eastern Maine rivers and streams, with some individuals up to 16-18” in the more productive trout rivers and streams. Fly fishing with nymphs, dry flies, and small streamers has been highly productive in the last two weeks. Brook trout fishing will slow by the end of June as water temperatures increase closer to 70 F, so if you love to fish flowing waters, now is the time to be out.

Our 2007 summer staff has 2 additional seasonal fisheries workers, Lonna Perry and Jessie Kuester, who are electrofishing Hancock and Washington County streams and rivers to collect information on brook trout populations. We expect that they will visit 150-200 eastern Maine streams this summer, contributing a great deal to our knowledge of brook trout. As proof of the old saying that “big fish eat little fish”, two 10-inch brook trout captured this week had fish in their mouths. One had a small brook trout, and the other had a sizable salt-water smelt!

-Rick Jordan, Regional Fishery Biologist


Lakes:
Regions: Calais, Downeast


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