I have heard the stories, though I have not yet witnessed the phenomenon of loons stealing fish from anglers' lines. I think my pal Doug and I came very close to seeing it Sunday on Little Kennebago. Certainly Doug, in his pontoon boat with his finned feet dangling in the water, came closer to a feeding loon than he perhaps would have cared to.

Common Loons, or at least loon-like birds, have been on Spaceship Earth for a long, long time -- a million or so years in their present form -- but we humans came close to wiping them out through various forms of negligence, stupidity and hostility. Some fishermen blame loons for poor fishing. "Damn things eat all the fish," they grumble. Think about it: a couple hundred years ago, even a hundred years ago, there were a lot more loons -- and a lot more trout. So who's to blame for poor fishing? Look at the pictures of 19th-century "sports" with their huge strings of fish, most of which were simply thrown away. Look at the habitat destruction, acid rain, modern poachers. And you still blame the loons for lousy fishing? Get a grip.

Back to the stories, which claim that the loons have learned to let us do their fishing for them, and that a trout struggling at the end of a fly line is easier pickings than a free-swimming fish. Personally, I do not doubt these stories, and the loon that accompanied us on Little Kennebago seemed to have such predation in mind as he hung around us while we fished. The loon was doing a lot of fishing himself, making numerous short dives in pursuit of the small trout that were thick in the water near the mouth of the inlet, but it was clear that most of his dives did not produce a meal or a snack. I have seen loons surface with quivering trout tails still visible at the edges of those long pointed beaks, but I didn't observe even swallowing actions when our friend surfaced. No wonder he kept checking us out to see if we were having any more success.

The trout, ranging from six to eleven inches long, were taking our dry flies with great abandon, providing a bit of fun in the absence of their parents and grandparents. They were game little fighters, but so small that the fight never lasted more than a few seconds before they were boated, unhooked and released. The short duration of those tussles didn't give the loon much of a chance to move in for a steal, but shortly after Doug had released a trout I heard him yell, "HEY! Getouttahere!" I looked over to see him pick up one of the pontoon boat's small oars and jab downward with it into the lake while he tried to lift his feet out of the water. The loon had swum right under Doug's flippers, and to have a close encounter with very large bird with a very sharp beak while you're sitting in an inflatable boat can be a bit unnerving. But nothing more happened -- the loon swam off and left Doug alone for the rest of the day.

Not an hour earlier Doug had spotted a yellow sign nailed to a tree on the far shore and had paddled over to read it. In bold black letters the sign said, "DO NOT DISTURB THE LOONS." I believe this is what's called irony.

One perfect day last autumn I lashed the canoe to the roof and headed for one of the prettiest ponds I know, Little Kennebago. I drove up the Morton Cutoff, hit the Lincoln Pond Road and headed east until I crossed the bridge over the Logans. I put the boat in the water at the launch just above the bridge, rigged my flyrod and pushed off. I paddled up the placid stream, anticipating a fine Fall fishing experience on classic Maine brook trout water. When I paddled around the final bend in the stream the familiar and always beautiful sight of the lake greeted my gaze. The still waters reflected the brilliant autumn foliage on the hills to the west, and about halfway up the lake I saw a trout rise. But I also had a terrible sinking sensation. I knew immediately something was wrong and I knew just what it was. On this perfect day for fishing, not a single angler could be seen on the water. The season was closed. Gulp.

I turned the boat around and paddled ferociously back to the landing, offloaded my telltale rod and landing net and fishing vest, heaved the canoe back up onto the roof rack and pulled the truck up into the parking area and took my lunch over to the weathered old picnic table that's been there for who knows how many years. At that point the warden, Reggie, pulled up in his truck. I thought, If you'd been here ten minutes ago you could have arrested me, all because I neglected to consult the 2007 rule book. Actually, I could have consulted the 2006 rule book, or any book from years past. While some waters remain open to catch-and-release angling through October, Little Kennebago is not one of them, nor has it been. Big Kennebago, yes, but not Little Kennebago.

However, rules change, and anglers are slow to pick up on the changes. At Upper Dam this year all brook trout must be released alive at once. That's new, and I have witnessed a couple of anglers kill brook trout this season out of ignorance of the change. I knew of the change because after last Fall's Little Kennebago blunder I read the 2008 book carefully. So it pained me to watch a kid and his girl friend torture and kill a trout that he'd managed to catch off one of the piers of the dam. While the girl shrieked with every twitch of the poor fish, the boy pinned it to the pier by stepping on it while he tried to pull out the hook by brute force. Even at a distance I could see the gouts of blood pouring from the trout's mouth. The slaughter finally done they bore the fish proudly back to camp for photos on the lawn. I'm sure the kid thought it was legal, as did another angler I saw catch and kill a trout a couple of days later. When I told him the law had changed, he was clearly dismayed at what he had done and thanked me for informing him.

Ignorance of the law is no defense. Carry that little rule book and actually read it. Or if you got your license online and don't have the book, you could pick one up anyplace that sells licenses or you could look up the rules online here.

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.

Perfect. All of it. Until...

All afternoon the Bro and I had cursed the breeze that blew our boats around and chopped the surface of the pond, making rises impossible to see and imposing the usual difficulties on casting. But we waited it out, hoping the late afternoon would bring calm air and flat water, and we were rewarded. By five o'clock the pond was glassy and we could see lazy rise rings as the trout inhaled mayfly emergers just under the surface. The fish were being very, very selective as they fed, knowing exactly what they were after and disdaining all else. Impatient after a long frustrating day, we pulled anchors and began gently cruising, heading for rise rings, trying to anticipate the trout's course and get within casting distance. This is nearly always a mistake. One of the immutable Laws of Angling says, "Shall an angler haul anchor and move his boat to a more promising spot, fish will immediately begin rising in the spot he just left." In fact, the Bro and I had been successful in the Moby Dick approach ("Lower the boats and after him, me hearties!") only one other time, but that was such a memorable evening that we're always game to try it again, and now seemed like the right time because the rises were not confined to one area but were sporadic and widely separated.

We paddled slowly, creating the least possible disturbance of the still waters, until I spied exactly what I was hoping for. A big trout was wallowing on the surface, dorsal fin waving as he snacked on what must have been a cluster of emergers. And he was heading straight for my canoe! I had on a dark Hendrickson fly. I gathered my line and false-cast just once, and then made a perfect -- I mean perfect -- cast. The fly settled gently on the water a foot ahead of the oncoming fish. I held my breath. In less than a second the fly disappeared, sucked in by a very large brook trout. Perfect!

What happened next is what is described in accident reports as "Operator Error." When the fly landed on the water in front of that big trout, my whole body, nay, my entire being was coiled tight as a steel spring. When I saw the fly disappear, the spring uncoiled. If I had been using 50-pound-test line and a saltwater boat rod, one of those stubby warclubs that bends only when hooked to an outbound freighter, that fish would have catapulted out of the pond and soared to a height known only to birds and Big Papi homers. What a view of his world he would have had! What a tale he could have told his fellow fish once he returned to his natural realm: You should have seen it! It was magnificent! The tall pines, the sun setting over the mountains! The clean, cool air!. But of course I had a 4-weight flyrod and the fly was attached to a 5X tippet, so what actually happened was that the tippet snapped and the fish swam away with the fly. I hope it disintegrates soon and doesn't interfere too much with his feeding. And I hope -- against hope, it would seem -- that before I die I will learn to control my response to strikes.