A long, long way down the 28-mile dirt road to Seboomook, we found a stream to our liking. We hated to be picky, but what the hell. This part of Maine is lousy with good trout water.
John headed downstream and I headed up. Dan grabbed the pool at the bridge. Old fishing buddies don't have to talk about who gets what.
I'd just made my first cast when I heard Dan shout. Over the sound of rushing water, I couldn't quite make out what he was saying. Something about an eagle. Then he shouted again. Something about a fish.
"Got one?" I shouted.
"I can't hear you, dude," John yelled from the lower pool. I grinned, knowing that John hates a lot of loud talk when he's in the woods. Tips them off that you're there.
Dan shouted again, louder this time, just as the sun disappeared from the sky above. An enormous winged shadow wheeled over me, across the stream and into the trees.
"A huge eagle, with a fish!"
It floated 20 feet above me, hauling a bronze-bellied brook trout in its talons. It was, indeed, a big eagle.
And a big trout.
We'd done plenty of fishing with eagles this week, trolling Moosehead Lake for salmon and togue, as Mainers call lake trout. Eagles nest in tall spruce trees on an island in the mouth of the Moose River. At dawn, the smelt run out of the rivers and into the lake. At dusk, the smelt run back into the rivers. As the trout and salmon chase the smelt, we and the eagles chase the trout and salmon.
The eagles catch more than we do.
The Moosehead region abounds in natural wonders. Wildlife is everywhere. On our annual ice-out trip this year—once again timed to perfection (pure luck since we book our rental in February, but we've been lucky for many years running) with the official date called May 7, when, after a long cold winter, Moosehead Lake was finally navigable from Greenville in the south to Northeast Carry, the northern tip—we saw moose, deer and fox; eagles, hawks, turkey and partridge; and all kind of waterfowl. The loon, hauntingly mellifluent when alone and comically distracting in numbers, is nearly as ubiquitous as the gull.
I've spent a big chunk of my life recreating in Maine, but I didn't get to Moosehead until I was in midlife. I plan to spend many years making up for what I've missed. And Moosehead Lake itself plays only a small part in the adventures I have planned. It seems almost sacrilegious to say it, but the 40-mile-long lake isn't the best part of the region. The lake, the largest in Maine, is spectacular—clean, cold and deep, with miles of still undeveloped shoreline. Long a tourist destination, attracting "sports" from Boston and New York City for nearly two centuries, Moosehead drives the local economy; the wide range of accommodations, restaurants and retail shops throughout the region are there in large part because of the lake.
The description at the website Trails.com is a good summary of what lies along the Moosehead Trail: "Northwestern Maine is a rough, muscular land filled with lakes that pool in glacial depressions, swift rivers that tumble and foam over boulders and bedrock, rolling hills and lofty mountains, and dark, brooding forests. & Few major roads penetrate this remote, wooded shoulder of New England. Those that do offer quiet highway stretches with less traffic in a year than Boston's Storrow Drive sees in a day. The 125-mile Moosehead Lake – Kennebec Valley scenic drive explores the lower North Woods of Maine, passing Moosehead Lake, Maine's largest lake, and traversing scenic river valleys and mountains. This excellent drive tours the empty Maine backcountry without requiring travel on rough dirt logging tracks or total abandonment of civilization."
If you get going early enough in the morning, the drive to Moosehead from the Valley is a relatively relaxing jaunt: out Rte. 2 to I-495 north, onto I-95 into Maine, then 157 miles up I-95 to exit 157 in Newport, where you take a series of well-marked one-lane roads (Rte. 11 to Rte. 7 to Rte. 23) to the beginning of the Moosehead Trail in Guilford. The Moosehead Trail (Rtes. 6 and 15) runs first past rolling farmland, through Abbot and Monson, where the Appalachian Trail crosses the road on its eastward journey through the 100-mile wilderness to Mt. Katahdin.
Your first glimpse of Moosehead Lake comes in Greenville, "The Gateway to Moosehead Lake," at the top of a long hill, Indian Hill, on Rtes. 6 and 15. Dead ahead of you is the lake, but before proceeding, you may want to stop at the Indian Hill Trading Post, the last significant market and sporting goods store for hundreds of miles. (Not to worry: there are plenty of amply-provisioned general stores and neat boutiques ahead, but this is your last chance at anything that resembles one-stop shopping.)
Greenville, on the southern shore of the lake, is as picturesque a town as you'll find in these parts, and by far the most tourist-friendly in the region. Here you'll find a variety of lodging options, from fairly plain motels to rustically-posh (or poshly-rustic) resorts, as well as some good restaurants. The Moosehead Trail, which serves as Greenville's main drag, is dotted with high-end outfitters pushing gear and guided trips for anglers, hunters, snowmobilers, kayakers, hikers and every sort of sightseer. In Greenville you can rent or charter a boat or a plane. Amid the outfitters are a number of boutique retailers hawking gifts, antiques and home furnishings. The Moosehead Lake Indian Store at Kamp Kamp (known locally simply as Kamp Kamp because it's so much fun to say with a Maine accent) sits on the corner where Rtes. 6 and 15 take a hard left in the middle of Greenville. Kamp Kamp is a must for anyone with a taste for North Woods d?cor.
From Greenville, it's about a half hour north through moose country to Rockwood, "The Heart of Moosehead Lake." En route, you'll pass Big Squaw Ski Resort, a gorgeous, 4,000-foot mountain with stunning views of the lake. Rockwood is not as genteel as Greenville, but it also offers a wide range of accommodations. We stay at Sundown Cabins (sundowncabins.com), in rustic but fully equipped camps right on the west shore of the lake, with stunning views of Mt. Kineo. Proprietors Mark and Isabele Telesz are busy all four seasons, as the fall hunters yield the camps and docks to the snowmobile and ice-fishing crowd in winter and the winter crowd is seamlessly replaced by anglers and moose watchers in spring and summer.
When I first took my wife and daughter to Moosehead a few years ago, I worried that they wouldn't share my enthusiasm for the region, based as it is in large part on the fishing culture. I needn't have worried. In August, we swam in the lake, hiked miles of trails through woods and along pristine rivers, had cookouts at a few of an endless number of camp sites equipped with outdoor fireplaces by the state of Maine, and generally poked along quiet country roads (even in August). We had a ball. My family was very comfortable at Sundown Cabins, where we cooked a lot of meals at our camp, but for families who want a bit more hand-holding, the Birches Resort (birches.com) offers a number of planned, all-service trips and tony accommodations.
From Rockwood, the only way to travel farther up the lake to its northern shore is by the dirt road to Seboomook—and taking that road is something I strongly recommend. But before getting off the Moosehead Trail entirely, it's well worth taking Rtes. 6 and 15 west to the outpost of Jackman, Maine, hard on the Canadian border. The road to Jackman has only been paved for about a decade, and even today, it remains free of telephone and utility poles. This is the best place to find moose—unless you're willing to wander off the paved roads and onto the dirt logging roads. By the time you've been to Jackman, a rugged place with only a few funky general stores, a bank, a market, a gas station and a dozen places selling snowmobiles, the idea of bombing down a remote logging road won't seem like such a hardass thing to do.
And that, for me, is the key to an authentic Moosehead adventure: get off the beaten trail, such as it is.
When I began going to Moosehead several years back, we found plenty of adventure, and, venturing just a few miles off the main road, saw an abundance of wildlife. In Rockwood, just a few miles down the dirt road to Somerset Junction—what amounts to a ghost town that was born and died with the rise and fall of train travel—we followed the mighty Kennebec River. Though dirt, the roads are well maintained by the logging industry, which allows the public full access to the roads and the wilderness through which they travel. The road to Somerset Junction has places to turn off and park every couple of hundred yards. By parking and hiking down the road or into the woods, keeping as quiet as possible, you have quite a good chance of encountering a moose or seeing a fox or even a bear cruising along the far banks of the Kennebec.
Much of our recent trip in May was spent finding new places to explore. One day we headed out of Rockwood back to Greenville and picked up the road to Kokadjo, where the Roach River, a spectacular fly-fishing-only trout stream, runs into First Roach Pond. The road takes you out past Lily Bay on the southeastern shore of Moosehead Lake (plan at least a short stop at Lily Bay State Park, unless you're a committed smallmouth bass angler, in which case a whole month won't be enough). As you get into Frenchtown, you'll see signs for the Kakadjo Camps, a remote sport-fishing village that doesn't appear to have changed much in the last 100 years. First Roach Pond is dotted with modest camps but remains otherwise undeveloped: a cold, clean lake surrounded by mountains.
Fact is, you don't have to venture far out of Rockwood or Greenville to get deep enough into the woods to feel all alone. The Moosehead Trail crosses literally hundreds of logging roads, each numbered and marked on all but the cheapest of maps (Delorme's Maine Atlas and Gazetteer, which is available for about $15 in just about every store in Maine, is a good companion when bushwacking), and all well maintained. Even the most remote roads, however, can be fairly well traveled at dawn and just before dusk during late spring and summer.
It isn't uncommon to run into families who come to this region just to look for moose. Typically, the moose crowd get out in the morning before the fishing crowd is even awake, returning mid-morning and hanging around camp until late afternoon, when the moose come back out of deep cover (often to get away from the mosquitoes) to catch the breeze along the roads. Except during fall rut, the moose seem like an unhurried bunch, grudgingly moving back into the woods after posing a few minutes to have their photos taken.
After the excitement of seeing the eagle carting its brook trout off to its nest, I made a few unsuccessful casts and wandered back downstream to watch my companions fish. When John saw me, he motioned me over.
"There's a nice brookie in that pool," he whispered as I got close. "I don't have the patience to get a cast in there, but you do."
I smiled, got into position and cast, careful to hold my rod high to get a natural-looking drift into the pool. On my second try, the fish struck hard. A minute later, I released the small native fish back into the stream.
"Nice. Maybe you smartened that little skipper so he won't be so easily fooled next time," John said. "I knew you had the patience to get him."
Patience may be my primary virtue as a fisherman, but that wasn't the reason for John's flattery. When we got back to the pool at the bridge to fetch Dan, John revealed his true motives.
"OK, Dan, I got him a fish. We can go now," he said with mock exasperation. It wasn't impatience that had John ready to pick up and head on down the road, so much as the thought of all the undiscovered places we'd yet to find. Just a few minutes down the road there were more great fishing spots to find, more eagles to see.
