(Continued from Brook Trout on Eagle Lake in Maine – 1)

Yes, trains.  Way out there in the middle of the woods there were two full-size engines and pieces of track and remnants of a cable system for hauling wood.  Back in the 20s, a logger had signed a contract to furnish 1 million cord of wood to the mills.  He brought these engines in over the ice in the winter and had them assembled.  Then just when everything was going great, the contract was sold, and another company took over.  After their contract was finished, they left, leaving the engines and equipment right where they stood.  So, they stand today, rusting away in the Maine woods.  (The related stories are attached to the end of this story, in case you would like to read them.)

Wednesday while we were trolling, we could see something in the water.  A moose was swimming from the island we were camping on across the lake to the other side.  After an hour or so, he must have gotten tired, because even though he was halfway across, he turned around and came back.  Since he was so close by, we motored over and watched as he made the last few hundred feet and climbed out onto the island, slipping into the woods.  Never saw him again.

Boy, could Dan cook those fish.  All that food he had promised to serve me just languished at the bottom of the cooler.  Fried trout every day for breakfast or lunch.  And on Wednesday, a special treat.  Dan laid two brook trout out on pieces of heavy-duty aluminum foil, added potatoes, onions, green and yellow peppers, bacon, his home-grown shitake mushrooms, some butter, salt and pepper, wrapped them up and laid them on the grill over the fireplace where the fire had burned down to some red-hot coals.  After nearly an hour we opened up those broiled fish and they tasted like any four-star restaurant could have produced. 

Thursday.  A different story.  While out fishing in the morning, we caught a couple of lake trout, and then …nothing.  The wind was coming up, the clouds rolling in, the water getting choppy, and the fish were hunkered on the bottom, a good 70-80 feet below us.  They must have been sensitive to the weather, because they sure weren’t biting.   Dan could see them on his fish finder, but none were high enough to see our bait, and any that might have been sure weren’t interested.

It started to rain, so we high-tailed it back to the camp.  It poured.  We sat in our fold-up chairs under the tarp, and watched.  And waited.  Then it looked like it was going to clear up.  Back in the canoe we went, out on the water.  More rain and wind.  Back to camp.  As we watched, 9-10 canoes crossed the lake headed for the dam and the Allagash River.  Other than a few campers on Monday, these were the first people we had seen all week.  Dan took a nap while I sat there, read and relaxed.

Finally, the sky cleared early in the evening, and we decided to go out for one last try.  We had eaten or released all but two of the fish, and needed two more to take home with us.  (The trouble was that the limit is two fish, minimum length 12”, and only one of the two can be over 14”.)  Nothing.  We trolled for over two hours and nothing.  As the sky began to darken, we returned to camp, stripped down the poles, packed up what we could in preparation for leaving the next day.

I stayed up a bit late that evening, watching and listening to the waves lapping the shore, listening to the loons, watching the stars, since the clouds had cleared away.  One more trip to the outhouse at the top of the hill, and off to bed.

In the morning, as I got the fire going, the sun came up over the trees in a clear sky.  The surface of the lake was as smooth as a well-made bed.  I took a picture of the sun through the trees as it came up over the lake.  Dan wanted to know what the weather was before he came out of the tent.  More coffee and bagels, eggs over easy and nice thick bacon from Bisson’s market in Topsham, cooked and eaten on an island in a lake in the North Maine Woods-how sweet it is. 

Then it was time to take down the tarp, pack everything away, load it into the boat and get ready to go.  The tent we laid on the beach so it would dry a bit before packing it in its bag.  The ground under the tent was dry as a bone, because Dan had brought along a piece of indoor-outdoor carpet to put under the tent.  We were never bothered a bit with a wet floor in the tent in spite of the heavy rain.

Why did we ever strip down those fishing poles?  Fish were rising all around us as we turned the canoe toward Churchill Dam.  A little way along we slowed to chat with a man and his young grandson trolling as we had been, compared catches, told them where we had had the most success, and continued on our way.

Early morning on a remote lake-what do you see?  Three moose in different places were getting breakfast as we motored by, not bothered a bit by our passage.

Back to the launch site, unload the canoe, go get the truck, load the truck, get the canoe on the trailer, discuss our stay with another Ranger, head on out, go thru the washout again, tracking the miles in each segment of the trip back to “civilization” to Millinocket, where we would stop at a Subway for lunch.  Sure didn’t taste like grilled brook trout.

(For information on getting ready for this trip, or one like it, see Part 3.)