The angling season is but days away – though actual angling may be quite a few more days away, thanks to winter’s reluctance to leave the stage. L.L. Bean staged its annual Fly-Fishing Expo last weekend, which featured a number of frozen-fingered visitors casting hookless flies at snowbanks, using the demo rods provided by the company in hopes of selling a few. There were illustrated talks in a large heated tent, and the Bro and I attended the “Back Country Fishing” discussion jointly presented by Mac Lord and Jeff Miller, two of Bean’s resident experts. Mac talked about riverine hotspots for smallmouth bass, and Jeff talked about stillwater fishing for trout. Both were willing to cough up tactics, strategies, flies – but location? Never. To quote Mac Lord, there’s a great spot on the Androscoggin “somewhere between Rumford and Brunswick.”

My home water is no secret: the Upper Dam pool. But my friend the Trout Babe was trying to pry out of me the secrets of catching fish in the pool. TB (not to be confused with Trout Boy) is an excellent flycaster and fly-tier, a member of the International Women Fly-Fishers, and has an impressive life list of places she has fished and fish she has landed. But she has yet to catch her first Landlocked Salmon. After reading my tale about The One That Got Away and seeing a photo of The One That Didn’t Get Away, she wants to catch her first landlocked at the dam.

“So what works?” she wanted to know. “Streamers? Gray Ghosts? What?”

I replied that I could better answer that question if I were in the pool with a fish on the line. Then I could tell her what that fish took, but that still wouldn’t be a guarantee that another fish would fall for it. I have gone to the pool and taken a fish on my first cast and thought, “Oh, boy! This is going to be a good day,” only to have every other fish in the pool studiously ignore that same fly. I have also had days when fish after fish would hit the same pattern. Then there have been the days when the fish would nail whatever combination of fur and feathers I lobbed at them, on the surface or under it.

What works is – well, what works. That’s the limit of my scientific analysis of the feeding habits of Upper Dam salmon. I’ve spoken to anglers coming out of the pool who confided that they had been killing ‘em -- killing ‘em! -- on a Great Golden Goosefly, or somesuch. Size 6. “They’re going for the big stuff,” they whisper. I nod, head for the pool, and start killing ‘em on size 20 beadhead cream midges. One day the fish were practically unzipping my vest pockets to get at my size 18 red Copper Johns. When I finally left the pool a gang of four guys headed my way, menacingly, it seemed to me. I thought they were going to beat me up for catching all the fish while they caught none. Instead, they smiled, said they had admired the performance – and then casually asked, as though they couldn’t have cared less, “Ah, by the way, what were they taking?”

The secret of the pool is not mine to share. It belongs to the fish.