My First Fishing Trip with Jacob Kinney

Every fisherman needs a good fishing buddy. Don’t get me wrong, a day spent on the water by yourself has a certain appeal to it. I enjoy it and do so quite often. However, fishing with a friend can be where it’s at. For all the reasons why people fish, it can all become more fun with a buddy. For Jacob and I, the reason is almost always the same, we go fishing because we want to catch fish. Simple as that.

I’ve always been obsessed with fishing. As a kid, I’d cast the new lures I’d gotten for my birthday into the ponds that would form on our flooded lawn each spring. I’d spend hours a day in the winter on Google Maps mapping out new streams and remote ponds to explore during the summer. I did my school science fair testing the physics behind which lures cast further than others. Above all else, I fished every chance I could, hounding family members one by one until I convinced one to take me fishing. It truly was all over once I had my driver’s license. I am still obsessed. I don’t practice my casting on the lawn anymore (that degree of madness is reserved for my buddy Jon) but the drive is still there. Up until I met Jacob, I did not know anyone with the same level of addiction as myself.

I’ll no doubt keep referencing and writing about our adventures together in this blog, but I’d like to start with our first fishing trip together. It was the start of my sophomore year in college at UMaine. I had just recently started to get to know Jacob. Basically, what I knew was that he liked to fish. When he wasn’t filling 5-gallon pales with perch or arrowing a carp, he was blasting a fish with his shotgun, which seemed pretty cool to me. Having grown up on an island on Lake Champlain, he hadn’t had much opportunity to catch brook trout. It just so happened that I was dreaming of my next adventure chasing these beautiful fish. I had heard rumors of a spring hole far up a stream out in the middle of Baxter State Park. I had a general idea of where it should be, I had been in there that summer poking around with my then girlfriend, now wife, Molly. Now you’ve got to understand, anyone who would follow me straight into the woods after I say “Oh it’s just a little ways, it won’t take long” has either never made that mistake before, or has the same sense of adventure as I do. I think it was our second “date” when I convinced her to go snowshoeing with me from Gould’s Mt. to Cold Brook Pond and back. Six miles and four hours later she determined that she would be asking more questions about my planned route next time…I had a blast! Needless to say, our summer fishing day had been a good scouting trip. After failed attempts to convince her to walk further upstream she wisely suggested we fish the holes I knew would be good that were right along the road. We caught a bunch of trout but I was still dreaming of that secret spring hole.

With grand stories of what could be I easily convinced Jacob to accompany me north to Baxter. It was September 24th, leaves were starting to change, and there was a coolness to the air that morning that signified that even though daytime highs were still in the 70s, fall had surely arrived. A few hours’ drive found us pulling into our trailhead at first light. We set off down the trail with our packs loaded with fishing gear, water, and a full day’s worth of food. We were determined to find the fish. After a few miles on the trail, we cut into the woods with a bearing for the stream. The route had been meticulously planned via Google Maps, the stretch of stream deduced from my summer scouting and the deciphering of 2^nd hand rumors of amazing fishing to be had. We snaked through thick spruce for about a mile then pushed through a few hundred yards of pucker brush to reach the water’s edge. Though it was a tough approach, Jacob never complained.

The water was very slow moving, had a strong brown tint due to the muddy bottom, and was about knee deep. I hopped in after rigging my fly rod and dropping my pack. Warm, very warm, and very low. The holes I had caught plenty from earlier in the summer likely were devoid of trout with these water conditions.

“Yup, we will have to find the spring hole if we’re going to see a brookie today,” I said.

“Well we’ll just have to go find it then” was Jacob’s reply.

We headed upstream wading through the water. In my experience Brookies prefer cool water below 66 degrees, 66-68 is tolerable but anything over that is lethal without thermal refuge. This water was well over 70, comfortable to wet wade with a high probability of leaches. Luckily we had brought our waders. As we went we cast ahead of us covering as much of the stream as we could. The hole could be anywhere and didn’t necessarily need to be a hole at all. Jacob was casting a panther martin spinner and I had tied on a size 8 black woolly bugger to mimic all those leeches. Chub, chub, and more chub. Typical of a warm water stream. We started around a corner that had more flow and a gravel bottom.

“Fish on!” exclaimed Jacob with enough gusto you’d think he’d just tied into a new state record.

“Well look at that, your first native Maine Brookie!” I said with relief.

It was only about 8″ long but it was a damn good sign. We rounded the corner and the stream widened to about 80 ft across. A small hint of current sat at the top of the broad slow pool. A fish splashed on top at the edge of the small bubble line, Bingo.

We spent the next two to three hours reeling in brookie after brookie. They weren’t all that big, some pushed past 10” and a nice one taped 13”, but there were plenty. Jacob and I see eye to eye on a lot of things when it comes to fishing and one of those is, “If they aren’t going to be big there better be a lot of ’em”. Every single one of those fish was beautiful. Being late in the fall the males had taken on wonderful coloration in preparation for spawning. The fishing finally slowed. We ended at a grand total of 86 reaching the net. I had had one of my best days with the fly rod, and Jacob had caught a ton as well. His excitement over catching those little trout showed me he was just as addicted to all this as I was. As we headed downstream Jacob told me since I had gotten him on some native Brookies, which were a bucket list fish of his, he’d be happy to show me what Champlain had to offer. Damn, aren’t I glad we found those fish.

That was the only time I’ve fished that spring hole. There are several reasons why. It is a long, hard hike in there, and you have to walk right past a pond that has a spring hole of its own that always fishes great. Truthfully I’ve never gone back in there because I’m afraid I’d find it to not be what it was. We had four straight hot and dry summers following which has put a hurting on many of the Brookie populations I grew up harassing. I like to remember it just the way it was that day. I’ve never shared its true location and I know Jacob hasn’t either.