(This story is long, so I broke it into 3 parts. Thanks for reading)

Brook Trout at Eagle Lake in Maine

 I don’t know why I said “Yes” when Dan asked me to go fishing with him. I hadn’t been fishing in over 40 years, especially not the kind of fishing he preferred.  After all, I had been warned several times.  I had heard the stories. 

Five days spent miles away from “civilization” in the deep wilderness.  A trip all the way up to the mouth of the Allagash region of the Maine North Woods.  The fabled Eagle Lake, favorite spot for fishing for the magnificent brook trout (brookies).  Camping on an island in the middle of the lake.  No phone signals for a hundred miles.  Trolling in a canoe for brook trout for hours at a time.

I mean, there was no walking home.  Did I have second, third and fourth thoughts?  You bet!  What had I gotten myself into?  I mean, this guy was a FISHERMAN!!!  He talked about his last trip for six months, and then started talking about the coming trip for the next six months. 

How was I going to feel with him reeling in fish after fish while I sat there holding a limp line?  I could even see it in my mind – “I had to catch all the fish so Bill could have something to eat and take pictures of.”  Maybe if I just had a heart attack I wouldn’t have to go.  But I had said I would go, because I just couldn’t think of any really valid reasons not to that would hold water.

Well, this is the story of the Fishing Trip to Eagle Lake with Dan.

First the planning – what fun he had planning for the trip.  This is what I’m going to feed you:  we’ll have Taco Soup on Monday.  Have you ever had Taco Soup?  No?  Well, I will make it up and freeze it, and it will thaw out while we are there.  Ring, ring – do you drink milk or coffee?  Ring, ring – do you like this?… that?  Let’s freeze the spaghetti sauce from the church dinner and take that.  Remember to get your license.  And be sure to bring a pillow.  You do have a sleeping beg, don’t you?

We’ll get up early (how early-will the sun be up?), have coffee and a bagel, go fishing, come in for a brunch of bacon, eggs and fried potatoes, go fishing, come in for lunch, go fishing, come in for supper, go fishing…My mind went into overload calculating the number of hours we would be fishing over the five days.  I figured the moon would be high in the sky by the time we quit for the night.  (Thank goodness his canoe did not have the requisite red and green lights for night-time fishing or he would pitch the tent in the canoe and only go to land for certain potty breaks and meals.)  By Friday I would have to be carried to the truck and would sleep all the way back.

And it didn’t help that both my wife and his wife were constantly reassuring me … ”you’ll have a good time.  You’ll see, you will enjoy it.”  Of course, Edie had never gone with him, and Sharon…, well, now her cat could sleep with her all night rather than having to scoot out of the bedroom when I came to bed.  I think they were just happy to get rid of us for a few days so they could go shopping.

Well, the day came. Fourth of July week.   “You need to be at my house so we can leave at 5 AM.”  Don’t forget your pillow.  Do you have your sleeping bag?  He had provided a waterproof bag for all my clothes, pills, snacks, flashlight, etc, etc, etc.  How did I know what to take?  Bathing suit, toothbrush, medications, oh, I need a license, you’ll need boots to get into the canoe, ear plugs (Edie told me Dan snores), camera (charge the battery), whistle (in case I got lost, how I don’t know), hat (I burn easily), sunglasses, clean underwear would help, sweatshirt, and on and on.  DON’T FORGET TOILET PAPER!!!

The easy part was the ride from Dan’s home in Brunswick to Medway, just off the interstate, Rte 95.  That was only 173 miles of nice smooth riding on Interstate 95, and featured, of course, a stop at Dysart’s Truck Stop for breakfast.  Diesel at Medway since we had 100 miles to go and 100 miles back (and there’s no diesel stations in the woods), a stop at Twin Rivers Canoe for some up-to-date information about the roads and fishing at The Lake, and away we go.

After 10 miles, we pass through Millinocket, heading into the woods.  Thirty-one miles, and we are on the Golden Road, stopping at Telos Gate (another 14 miles) to sign-in and pay for the camping spot.  Now the fun begins!

Essentially from here on in, we are on wide single-lane gravel logging roads, open to the public, but with a catch.  This is logging country, and the trucks have the right-of-way.  Move over, get out of the way.  Trees stacked by the side of the roads, waiting to be picked up and hauled to the mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket.  Logged over sections, slash lying around, places where moose should be hanging out.  Haven’t seen any yet, but our time would come.

Whoops, there goes a black bear across the road – our first real wildlife of the week, but not the last.  About the only part of them that you see is their rear end disappearing among the trees and their recycled food lying in the middle of the road. 

Hey, we come to Bill’s Road – have to stop and get a picture next to it.  Wow, I have an 8-mile road named after me.  There’s Churchill Road, and oops, the road is washed out.  Yes, they told us that at Twin Rivers Canoe.  About six feet deep, and twenty feet long.  Any place to turn around and find another way to our destination?  And how do you do that with a 21- foot canoe on a trailer behind you? 

Dan says nothing, just reaches down, flicks on the 4-wheel drive lock, inches his Dodge Heavy Duty Ram 2500 crew cab 4-wheel-drive pickup (with the Cummins Turbo Diesel 6.7L engine and color –coordinated bed cover) forward, down over the bank, across the washout, and up the other side.  No sweat.  At least not for him.  Obviously, knowing what your truck can do and having the courage to prove it made the difference between going across and finding another way around, an additional two-hour delay in getting to the lake. 

Then, another couple of miles and we turn right at the intersection, and finally, Churchill Dam, the launch site, a total of two-hundred seventy-eight miles in about 9 hours.

Swing around to the Ranger station, get 5 gallons of fresh drinking water at the pump and back over to the boat launch.  Now, the back of that 8-foot pickup bed is FULL of boxes, bags, coolers, motor, gas, etc.  We only have a 21- foot square-end Scott Hudson Bay canoe.  Since Dan has 10 plus years of experience making this trip, I know he knows exactly where each item has to go in the canoe.  Sure enough, another hour and everything is transferred, the canoe is loaded, and all we need to do is back her in, float her off the trailer, and get going.

Meanwhile, the Ranger and his assistant have come over and are out on the dock working on the high-speed boat they use to patrol the lakes and camp sites.  The truck and canoe are on the ramp, waiting to be backed down into the water, and Dan is standing at the rear of the canoe and I am at the front.  All of a sudden, I hear splashing.  As I look up, a yearling moose comes striding along the edge of the water between us and the dock, so close Dan could have reached out and touched it, if he hadn’t been as shocked as I was at seeing it.

The Ranger laughed.  “We tried to let you know he was there.  He stood there for five minutes before he decided to come on across.”  The moose just walked down the shore a couple hundred feet and stood there eating. 

Okay, excitement’s over.  Get the canoe in the water, take the truck and trailer up to the parking area, and cast off.  (Remember to wear the life jackets.)  Here we go.  Beautiful afternoon, a few puffy clouds – much different from what it was starting off in Brunswick with drizzle and clouds.  Dan has a 9.9 hp Mercury motor for the canoe, and it pushes us along at a good pace.  Down Churchill Lake, under John’s Bridge, down Eagle Lake to Farm Island.  One hour from launch, and WE ARE HERE.

Unload the canoe, choose the camping spot closest to the water, set up the 4-man tent, toss the blue tarp up over the pole above the table, tie it to the surrounding trees for a nice dry spot to cook and eat (sure came in handy on Thursday). 

Hey, it’s still day-light, we have time to go fishing.  Dan has rigged the trolling rods with the Pflueger Sal-trout #1558 reels and 12# test line, picked up the bait traps with some English muffins for bait, and off we go to the “rockpile”.  When there were logging operations around the lake a number of years back, some rocks were dumped into the lake as a base for a log boom (long gone) across the lake.  (The log boom was used to hold cut logs floating in the water from drifting away down the lake while they were waiting for transport.)  Still visible a few feet down, they were just the spot to set five bait traps for some shiners. 

Since we had stopped to pick up a few shiners (minnows) for bait on the way up, we threaded the hooks into them (I’ll tell you how later), reeled out the lines and let the motor idle along at the lowest speed.  Since the lines were color coded, with each color 10 yards long, we could tell how much line we had out, and calculated about a one-foot drop for each five yards of line.  Okay, here’s where boredom sets in, I thought.

Whoops, a strike.  Did he take it?  Is he on?  Reel him in.  Wow, the first one is a 15-inch brook trout – there’s supper.  Maybe I shouldn’t have caught one before Dan did.  That’s okay, he has one, also.  Man, I love fishing.  It’s been a long time, but it’s coming back.

Back to the campsite after a couple of hours and a couple more trout, and Dan cleans that trout in sixty seconds flat, sticks it in a frying pan, along with some sliced potatoes and a couple of veggies, and voila, dinner is served.  I had thought I did not like fish, but that brookie was tender and delicious. 

Oh, did I mention the red-and-white checked plastic tablecloth he spread out over the picnic table?  I was so disappointed that he forgot the sparkling grape juice and faux champagne glasses and candles.

Of course, I got a fire started in the fireplace when we came back in with wood Dan had packed (can’t bring in a chain saw or cut down trees on Maine Public Lands), so we sat by the fire for an hour or two and then sacked out in Dan’s 4-man tent.  It sat on a little slope, so at night you started at the top of the slope in your sleeping bag and by morning you were at the other end.

Then I was shocked!  Dan didn’t crawl out of bed before sunrise Tuesday and holler for me to get up and get going.  Nope, the sun was way up already before he made coffee, toasted a couple of bagels over his gas stove, and served them up with butter and cream cheese.  Finally, after wasting all this time eating, we got out on the water.  First, we checked out the bait traps, and found enough shiners for a couple of days worth of bait, re-baited the traps and tossed them back onto the rock pile. 

Back to fishing.  We spent most of the three days of fishing near the island since the water was up to eighty feet deep and Dan had a fish finder.  Man, what a host Dan was.  After refreshing my memory as to how to bait the hook, treat the fish gently for catch and release, etc., he must have given me the best rod and reel, the most attractive bait and the better side of the boat, because I just kept hooking those brook trout and even a couple of Togue (lake trout).  In fact, for every one he caught, I caught three.  What a nice guy. 

Maybe it was because he spent all his time looking at his fish finder, trying to find out where the fish were.  Once, he even asked me how much line I had out, since I was catching one right after the other, and he was just watching me do it.  Over those three days, I landed 14 brook trout and 5 lake trout.

Although one of those brookies was only 8 inches, the rest ranged from 13 – 19 inches.  And the lake trout I caught, wow – 17 to 23 inches, and then a 25-inch beauty.  With the 23 incher I broke the record of 22” Dan’s brother-in-law had held for the past 10 years on his trips to Eagle Lake.  Not only that, but Dan also caught a 23-inch Togue (lake trout), so he broke that previously held record too. 

So it went all day Tuesday and Wednesday, catch some fish, release most of them, go in, cook and eat a couple, relax for a few minutes, then go back for more.  By Wednesday afternoon we were ready for a break, so we went across the lake to see the trains. 

(Go to part two to continue.)