I see that the Friends of Merrymeeting Bay plan to sue the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in a new attempt to place the Kennebec River Atlantic salmon on the endangered list. The lawsuit follows a 2005 petition filed by the Friends which the Fish & Wildlife people ignored, despite federal law which requires a regulating agency to respond to such a petition within a year.

No one knows for sure how the bay got its name, but it is certainly a merry meeting place of waters, fish and wildlife. It's where the Kennebec and the Androscoggin, two of Maine's largest rivers, mix and mingle, joined by the Cathance, the Muddy, the Abagadasset and the Eastern rivers, all six of which drain a 10,000 square mile watershed comprising forty percent of Maine and a piece of New Hampshire. The combined waters, mainly fresh -- the tide rarely overcomes the flow of the rivers to penetrate the waters of the bay -- empty into the tidal lower Kennebec and glide down past Bath, where they float the warships built at the Iron Works, and thence to the sea, past Fort Popham and Pond Island light. The bay has been for millennia a hospitable staging point for the spawning runs of anadromous fish including the Atlantic salmon, American shad, alewives, smelt, stipers, and even two varieties of sturgeon. Pogies, bluefish, eels and tomcod have shared the waters with trout, bass, perch and a variety of baitfish. A long list of native and migratory waterfowl, shorebirds and songbirds, and mammals from moose to mice find bountiful habitat around, in and on the bay. The late John Cole wrote eloquently and passionately of fishing and gunning on the bay.

In short, Merrymeeting Bay is an environmental treasure, a cornucopia of lifeforms and a place whose waters and creatures should be preserved and protected forever. But for the past several years the regulators have become deregulators, and the protectors have failed to protect. You might think about joining the Friends in their fight to protect the Atlantic salmon of the Kennebec and all the other myriad creatures of a priceless ecosystem. As an angler, you have an obligation, I figure.

I see that the Friends of Merrymeeting Bay plan to sue the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in a new attempt to place the Kennebec River Atlantic salmon on the endangered list. The lawsuit follows a 2005 petition filed by the Friends which the Fish & Wildlife people ignored, despite federal law which requires a regulating agency to respond to such a petition within a year.

No one knows for sure how the bay got its name, but it is certainly a merry meeting place of waters, fish and wildlife. It's where the Kennebec and the Androscoggin, two of Maine's largest rivers, mix and mingle, joined by the Cathance, the Muddy, the Abagadasset and the Eastern rivers, all six of which drain a 10,000 square mile watershed comprising forty percent of Maine and a piece of New Hampshire. The combined waters, mainly fresh -- the tide rarely overcomes the flow of the rivers to penetrate the waters of the bay -- empty into the tidal lower Kennebec and glide down past Bath, where they float the warships built at the Iron Works, and thence to the sea, past Fort Popham and Pond Island light. The bay has been for millennia a hospitable staging point for the spawning runs of anadromous fish including the Atlantic salmon, American shad, alewives, smelt, stipers, and even two varieties of sturgeon. Pogies, bluefish, eels and tomcod have shared the waters with trout, bass, perch and a variety of baitfish. A long list of native and migratory waterfowl, shorebirds and songbirds, and mammals from moose to mice find bountiful habitat around, in and on the bay. The late John Cole wrote eloquently and passionately of fishing and gunning on the bay.

In short, Merrymeeting Bay is an environmental treasure, a cornucopia of lifeforms and a place whose waters and creatures should be preserved and protected forever. But for the past several years the regulators have become deregulators, and the protectors have failed to protect. You might think about joining the Friends in their fight to protect the Atlantic salmon of the Kennebec and all the other myriad creatures of a priceless ecosystem. As an angler, you have an obligation, I figure.

A PR person named Mary contacted me some time back to ask if I would "consider a blurb on Fantasy Fishing." She bugged me about it again this week. Well, Mary, I have considered, and here it is.

Fantasy Fishing invites people to log on to a website and "pick 10 professional anglers for their fantasy fishing teams." As I understand it, those pro anglers (read: bass fishermen) will compete in seven competitions, sponsored by Wal-Mart, which should offer a clue to the nature of the events. The fantasy player whose team scores the most points in the tournaments wins $1 million.

These events are organized by something called FLW Outdoors, whose chairman, Irwin L. Jacobs, apparently hopes to turn tournament fishing into "the next NASCAR."

To my way of thinking, one NASCAR is one too many, and to speak of fishing in the same sentence with NASCAR is about as close to sacrilege as I can imagine. I rank the oxymoronic "motor sports" as among the dumbest human activities on the planet. To link fishing in any way with NASCAR would be just about the worst fate I could imagine for the sport of fishing, short of legalizing the use of cyanide and TNT in trout streams. So I can only hope and wish that FLW Fantasy Fishing remains a twisted fantasy -- though, as my sainted Swedish grandmother used to say, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Anglers always compete, I suppose, but any angler who performs a victory dance on the banks of the Upper Dam Pool because he caught more salmon than his companions should be banished to some warm, weedy southern bass lake where he can join the ranks of meatheads and lob pork rinds at largemouths while tossing his Bud empties over the side.

Thanks for the opportunity, Mary. Motorheads and meatheads, start your invective.

The February dinner meeting of the Fly Casters Club of Boston, held in the venerable Union Club on Park Street, featured a cash liquor bar, an open oyster bar, a well-grilled lamb chop and the conviviality of anglers who told fish stories and had pictures to back them up. It was a treat to be in the company of these men (and they were all men) but the greatest pleasure of the evening turned up in the after-dinner conversation with one of my tablemates.

My host, Cambridge realtor Richard Diamond, had invited me in December but a major snowstorm altered my plans. On the appointed Thursday in February, the weather was slightly more benign, though still raw and spitting snow, and the evening's entertainment was provided by members rather than paid speakers. One member regaled us with tales from a Bahamian bonefishing trip when he and three other Fly Casters had stayed at Crazy Charlie's Bang-Bang Club (a resurrection of a former hunting club) and caught bonefish, it seemed, from dawn to dusk. Every other photo was of an angler with a bending flyrod; every other picture was of a bonefish. Another member took us down Oregon's fabled McKenzie River in a drift boat (a McKenzie boat, of course), hoisting rainbows from every run and riffle; and a third straddled the continent with one foot in small Montana streams which produced brook trout and cutthroats, and the other in Buzzard's Bay where striped bass abounded. It was enough to make me want to rise at the crack of dawn, pull on my waders and go fishing somewhere, for something -- anything -- in defiance of the calendar.

But the highlight for me was my conversation with the gentlemen on my left, a Newton resident named Bob Guttentag (I neglected to ask if he was a fellow Swede). When I mentioned that my home water was the pool at Upper Dam, Bob told me that as a young man he had fished in Mooselookmeguntic (which drains through Upper Dam into Upper Richardson Lake) with Herbie Welch.

Herbie Welch! The man is legend in those parts. Though his friend Carrie Stevens won wide acclaim for her streamer flies, it was Welch who virtually invented the streamer for catching trout and salmon in the Rangeley watershed. Herbie Welch came to the Rangeley area in 1903, according to Graydon and Leslie Hilyard's wonderful book Carrie Stevens, and established himself as the region's premier guide, fly-tyer and taxidermist, the latter skill enhanced by his training as an artist in Paris (France). From the look of Herbie, in the photo on page 55 of the Hilyards' book, he must have singlehandedly swelled the ranks of female flyfishers who no doubt fought over his services. (As a guide, of course.) Herbie was still keeping shop at Haines Landing when I first fished in the area, but I never met him. Yet here at my table was a man who had fished with Herbie Welch! Guttentag said Herbie yelled at him for having an unorthodox tackle rig and was generally difficult to please (you had to please a guide like Herbie, and not vice-versa) but a great man to fish with.

Every summer I walk across the dam to make a small quiet pilgrimage to Camp Midway, where Carrie Stevens created her famous Gray Ghost streamer. I re-read the bronze plaque honoring Carrie and draw a cupful of cold, clear water from the well opposite the camp and think on the history of the place and the anglers who came before me. This season I'll have a new memory, a living link to the great Herbie Welch.

When Doug Stevens read the last entry in this space, about the conversation I'd had in L.L. Bean with an angler who sort of dissed New Zealand flyfishing in favor of the Kamchatka, Doug wrote:

As a passionate angler who has fished New Zealand waters for many decades I can only say that this is a misguided viewpoint. While there are indeed rivers with crystal clear water that hold large but challenging fish, there are many other types of fishing waters available suitable for all levels of anglers. Yes, some do require a hard slog through bush (if that is what you want) but...New Zealand Fish and Game has also opened up many waters to the general public. Well signed parking areas, access points and tracks are provided giving ready access to literally thousands of kilometres of rivers and lake shores. From the fabled large fish waters of Lake Taupo to the beautiful dry-fly waters of the Mataura River, there is a range of fishing to suit all levels of skill and fitness. If anyone finds a river that runs through majestic mountain ranges and holds large fish that will challenge their skills boring, then I am surprised. To check out the huge variety of waters available in New Zealand, I suggest that (you) visit the website nzfishing.com and look at some of the photos of the waters available.

I did look at the website, a good one, and then had to wipe the drool off my keyboard. Huge fish, spectacular water in jaw-dropping surroundings, and a wide variety of lodging for anglers, some in the "very affordable" range. My next stops on the Web were at sites offering bargain air fares, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I could get a roundtrip fare for a lot less than I had imagined.

No, I'm not going this Spring, but I just may start squirreling away some of my ill-gotten gains into a New Zealand fund. Lodging is cheaper for two, so if you're a good-looking flyfisherwoman with a valid passport and an itch to travel, you know where to find me.