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Family Bike Trip Leads to Future Fishing Spot

July 05, 2011 - Augusta- Family time increases in July and August, and four favorite Maine pastimes for parents with children include swimming, hiking, bicycling and fishing together. These sports boom through the heart of summer.

Of those activities, swimming has always drawn a following, and for the past two decades, hiking and biking have exploded in popularity, thanks to an increased interest in exercising to battle rising obesity.

However, Maine anglers have declined in numbers, evidenced by license sales since 1980. People in the computer age often dislike a hobby like fishing that includes long periods of inactivity, common during heat spells, full moons and east winds.

With that said, hard-core anglers still exist, and on their days off from work, they dislike missing a day on the water. This irritation proves doubly true when stripers swarm at Popham, blue-winged olives hatch full bore on the Kennebec in Bingham or any similar fishing news titillates the soul.

No one enjoys fishing and hunting more than this writer, but a non-fishing outing with family does not feel like a jail sentence to me.

When hiking or particularly bicycling, even on paved byways, I find trout brooks and deer-hunting spots to explore in depth later. In short, road biking offers me the best of both worlds: spending time with family while furtively scouting for future adventures.

In fact, these days, my favorite deer-hunting woods first caught my eye while Jolie, my intrepid companion, and I were bicycling along a highway, slicing through undeveloped forests.

Careful cyclists stay to the right near gravel shoulders and scrutinize pavement ahead, checking for small, loose rocks large enough to dump a bicycle. In the process, we noticed heart-shaped tracks in the soft roadside. Lots of prints indicated that the woods there hold plenty of whitetails.

Locating fishing spots while cycling on paved roads might surprise folks until they look at bicycling statistics. An out-of-shape pedaler can average 10 miles per hour, which covers 20 miles in two hours. A skilled, in-shape cyclist can cover 18 miles in an hour or 36 miles every two hours.

As a general rule, traveling 20 to 36 miles in Maine crosses several brooks, many concealed by forest canopies that hide the water. A week of pedaling different roads crosses myriad brooks and streams.

Here's an excellent example of how this works: Recently, my youngest daughter, Katelyn, and I were bicycling along delightfully smooth pavement slicing through thick woods when we crossed a bridge above a shrub-choked gully with a dense canopy.

The mellifluous sound of a flowing, spring-fed brook caught my ear, instantly exciting me. It sprung from hills to the west and poured into estuarine habitat just to the east of us, visible through the trees.

After crossing the brook, Katie and I came to more hidden jewels. Such good fortune elated me, particularly after noticing no angling trails along banks covered with nearly impenetrable shrubs and ground plants.

In most instances, any Maine spring brook that stays below 68 degrees all summer and runs into brackish water contains sea-run brook trout, colloquially called "salters."

("Sea-run" is misleading because these fish live in estuaries -- seldom the ocean. Salters spend much of the year in food-rich estuarine habitat and migrate up brooks to feed on aquatic insects dislodged by faster currents during spring freshet and again to spawn in fall.)

Salters battling up April brooks average two inches longer than ones that stay in brooks year-round. Salters in larger rivers swim upstream in May and may run one to two pounds.

I cannot wait until next April to fish these brooks that Katie and I passed, and without a family outing with bicycles, most of them would have escaped my notice. Foliage completely concealed them, but the bubbling, rushing current gave them away.

I'll probably find blistering action next spring, and here's why: About 10 years ago on April 1, the season opener then, Tom Seymour of Waldo and Harry Vanderweide of Augusta watched me hook a salter in a tiny brook in a pool beside Route 1 -- practically within sight of the ocean.

As I played the trout, several other brookies followed, trying to figure out what caused their buddy to act so bizarrely. This occurred beside one of Maine's busier highway.

Ken Allen, Maine Sunday Telegram, July 2011

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