Grand Lake Stream Recap
When most people think of the best freshwater rivers in Maine, they consider the Rangeley region, or the East and West outlets and general area of Moosehead lake. These spots are admittedly fly fishing utopias, and I don’t have a bad word to say about them. But I’d like to take some time to nominate another river that, while well regarded, doesn’t get the same acclaim as some of its western Maine peers. Grand Lake Stream is 190 miles by road from Moosehead, but it has the same wild feel and world class fishing. I took my annual trip to GLS last weekend to time the Hendrickson hatch, and as usual I left the river feeling totally satiated.
If you’ve never been to GLS, its about an hour and a half NW from Bangor (pronounced Bang-a-hor) Maine. The best way to get their is via the Airline road, which cuts through a heavily forested part of the state. There are old logging roads jutting out every few miles, and many of those roads go over great trout creeks if you have some time to go exploring. GLS is a small town built around the river that runs out of West Grand Lake. We always stay at local matron Mary’s Canal side Cabins, which are conveniently located right at the dam pool. for 70 bucks a night you can stay in a cabin where Johnny Appleseed was likely conceived, and you can tell if fish are rising from your bedroom window. I highly recommend.
The best thing about Grand Lake Stream is that it is always loaded with fish. The salmon run up from Big Lake to feed in the river in the spring, and then again in the fall to spawn. The water is gin clear and produces some phenomenal hatches of mayflies, caddis, stoneflies, and even hexes. I once hit a caddis hatch that was so enormous in biomass that it was hard to tell where the river ended and the air began. This year we went earlier than usual to try and hit the Hendrickson hatch, which is one of the earliest mayflies that hatches in Maine. The whole trip saw mayfly hatching, although it was generally pretty weak and didn’t inspire any feeding windows like you read/dream about. The fish were everywhere, but you could tell that they had already seen a good bit of pressure, which was made evident by their lack of interest in most of the flies we presented them. When we dialed it in, the fishing was as epic as usual, but it definitely took some time to establish a pattern.
If you fish a piece of water over and over, it starts to get a familiar feel that links year to year. After a long enough period of time, the trips start to blend together and you’re left with a mental profile of the spot that you can access when determining the best fly to use, or which spot to hit first. When I watch the real old timers fish, I can tell that they have 40 years of knowledge without asking them, because they fish with this sense of confidence and calm that you don’t see on anyone else. I’m a good fly fisherman, but whenever I fish a new spot emit this frantic energy as I try and figure out the river and the fish. One of the many reasons that I love Grand Lake Stream is it has that familiar feeling, where I don’t have to think too hard about what spot to hit or what fly to use.
It wasn’t automatic, but after some workshopping and fly spamming we figured out that the fish wanted pheasant tail nymphs (no bead heads!!). We had success with multiple dry flies, but the winning fly was a simple size 16 parachute adams, which was just bulky enough to run a dry dropper rig. We were picking a good shot of salmon the first day, but it was the second day that really got hot. There was steady Hendrickson hatching, but most of the fish were still feeding sub surface. It really got fun when a fish would rise. We figured out that if a fish would rise, you could get it to take a dry fly 9 times out of 10. The fishing became more like hunting, where we would wait and watch for a fish to rise, then take turns sneaking up and getting a dry fly in its face.
On the final day of the trip, we put on the sinking line reels and hit the dam pool to catch some smallmouth. We were catching some fish when a guy turned up and started taking pictures of us. Turns out he was from OnTheWater magazine, and caught us red handed bass fishing in sacred salmon waters. When pressed, I told him that “I already caught every salmon in the river and was getting bored”. I pray every day that doesnt make it to print in the June issue of the magazine. Anyhow, the river is world class, its filled with wild salmon and some brook trout, and it should be on your list of places to fish every year until you turn into a Mayfly.
-Grady
