The flow of Moosehead Lake water pouring through the East Outlet dam had been cut back to the point where the headwaters of the mighty Kennebec were wadeable and therefore fishable without a driftboat. Of course, there were plenty of those in the water. When I arrived at the river on my first morning of fishing, I counted five boats clustered in that first run of braided water where the river leaves the big, swirling dam pool. So I headed downriver and fished the broad flats below Beach Pool for awhile, without success. That flat water, and the deep run along the far bank, can be loaded with fish at times, but the flats are not morning or mid-day water. Evenings are best there. So I moved upriver to Y Pool, which offers a whole textbook of fishing possibilities from the deep pool at the top to the pockets among the boulders in the center to classic run-and-riffle water along the shores.

No sooner had I reached the river via the path down through the woods than I saw salmon nymphing in the slick near the tail of the run along the right bank. Looking closer, I also saw Hendrickson duns floating serenely down the current, but they were getting a free ride; I did not see a fish take a dun. I tied on a pheasant-tail nymph, cast across the current and let it ride down to where the tails and dorsals of the nymphing fish were showing. Bang. And bang again. Two salmon on two casts. Then, nothing. Why does that happen? A complete, mystifying shutdown. I looked more closely at the water. There were still duns floating by, but now they were of three varieties. At the top of the scale were the Hendricksons, about size 14. Then came a smaller mayfly, lighter in color, about a 16 or 18, and finally, tiny blue-winged olives. Maybe the fish had switched to a smaller nymph, so I did, too. Still nothing. I watched some more, and finally was rewarded with the sight I had been hoping for: a salmon sucked in a Hendrickson dun. I quickly tied on an imitation, floated it downstream, and took the fish. But only that one -- my next hundred casts produced nothing.

In the late afternoon I returned to the dam pool. I waded out a few yards and started drifting nymphs down towards the tail of the pool where it shoals up into the broad riffle that curls toward the right bank and meets the mainstream. No action. I tied on a Doug's Smelt, created by my pal Doug Mawhinney of Mexico (Maine), cast it upcurrent, let it swing, and began to retrieve it in short, quick bursts. Something heavy grabbed the fly and the battle was joined. The fish stayed down and was hard to move in the current. I gained some line, then he took off on a beeline towards the dam, stripping yards of fly line off the reel. When he finally stopped, he headed back towards me, and I had to reel in like crazy to try to keep a tight line. If it had been a salmon, I thought, he would have surfaced by now. I was thinking I had a big brookie and was eager to see the fish. When he finally began to tire, and I brought him near the net, I saw not the square tail, white-edged fins and classic marking of a brookie but instead the forked tail and golden hue of an 18-inch lake trout. That was a first -- I had never caught a laker in the East Outlet -- and there was a second and a third before the evening was done.

Lakers in the river came as a surprise to me, but not to Scott Snell, who owns and runs Wilson's on Moosehead (see Scott's website). "They move in here in the spring and feed on sucker eggs," Scott said. "Caught 'em on a streamer, did you?"

Ayuh.