Culvert Fishing
There are lots of great places to catch a fish in Maine. There are wonderful guides, maps, and books to get you to those fish. What could be more fun than trying to find some remote pond or brook with a DeLorme Maine Atlas and Gazetteer and Ron as the navigator? (But let’s not get lost today.) What I really I want to write about are some overlooked fishing opportunities. At least they are overlooked by most of the literature. I’m talking about culverts and small bridges.
How many times do you think some big SUV filled with expensive gear and a couple of skunked fisherman on their way home have passed a kid walking down the road with a nice string of trout?
“Did you see that? Where did he catch those?” As the car drives by you can hear the jealousy singing from the tires. Well I’ll tell you where he caught them. He was at the closest culvert. And by the look of those fish he’s had a pretty good after school session.
Maine in the spring is leaking water. After a good winter the state has a lot of snow to melt and it runs off everywhere. To keep it from washing out the roads the DOT channels the brooks under our roads through culverts and small bridges. The damming action on one side of the road builds up a nice little pool and then on the other side the water usually builds up a nice little plunge pool. The fish seem to find them. How do you know which brook to stop by? That is the trick.
There’s a lot of virtual fishing done these days and any number of sites where you can brag, chat about fish, or learn to tie a new fly pattern. I go to them myself. You want to know how the fishing is around Moosehead? Danny Legere will tell you at the Maine Guide Fly Shop site. Shawmut? Mike Holt at Fly Fishing Only’s site has a weekly report. The Department Of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has a wonderful Google earth map on its web site identifying Heritage Lakes and Ponds. These are ponds that have either never been stocked (A) or haven’t been stocked in the last 25 years (B). I have a friend who just fishes the A ponds. But, do you know what? Fifty years ago he was the kid you passed on the road with the string of nice fish coming home from the culvert. He’s fished all over the world, but he still knows how and what to look for in a dirt road fishing hole.
First, slow your car down enough to see if there are any fish rising. That’s a sure give away. Next, look for a nice beaten path through the brush down to the stream where you’ll find some littered styrofoam worm containers. Another dead give away is a pick up truck or a few parked bicycles. The best indicator is about a dozen fishing rigs hanging from the power line that runs along the road. Mark it on your GPS, you know you’ve got a really hot spot. Sometimes the fish are so small they can’t get their little lips around anything bigger than a size 18 hook, but what they lack in size they make up for in eagerness. They are there to please and can be ravenous. Ron and I have been reduced to giggling childishness by a good session of culvert fishing.
The quarries around Thomaston, Rockland, Rockport, Warren, and Lincolnville produced a limestone naturally mixed with clay that by the Civil War turned Rockland into the lime producing capital of the world. You can still see a beehive lime kiln preserved in the Waterfront Park of Rockport. These kilns took about a week to bake about 30 tons of lime. The limestone is fired to about 1425 degrees Celsius and undergoes a series of chemical changes to produce the clinkers that are then crushed and ground into the fine cement. They carried their cargoes from Rockland to markets up and down the east coast. Casks of lime were a dangerous cargo for the wooden ships of 150 years ago. If lime comes in contact with water it generates heat that can set a ship on fire and if you’ve spent any time on the water, you know it’s hard to keep the hold of a wooden ship dry. It was a dangerous trade. You probably recognize the name Portland cement. It wasn’t from Portland Maine at all, but from rock originally quarried on the Isle of Portland in Dorset England where a bricklayer patented the production process of this now most common cement. It’s from modern Portland cements that concrete products, culverts, are cast.
Gulf Hagas is on the West Branch of the Pleasant River about 16 miles northwest of Brownville Jct. It’s called the Grand Canyon of Maine. In four miles the river drops 400 feet and has cut a spectacular gorge along the faults of the underlying slate. From the rim you can look down at the stream and its series of waterfalls and pools. There may be fish rising in every pool. But upstream, farther to the west, where the land flattens out is one big mother of a culvert. It must be sixteen feet in diameter. I wish I could tell you where it was made, but I’m afraid I can’t. I can only tell you that I still dream about the fish that a culvert like that could produce.