Hunting and fishing are mountain do's

By TOM ATWELL, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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Although the White Mountain National Forest is federal property and run by the U.S. Forest Service, when it comes to hunting and fishing, the state is in charge.

Both hunting and fishing are doing pretty well in the Maine section of the national forest.

Fishing

One of the big success stories in the Maine section is the reclamation of Crocker Pond and Broken Bridge Pond, both located in Albany Township.

John Boland, a fisheries biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said that over the years species such as sunfish, pickerel and minnows that compete with brook trout for food or actually eat small brook trout have been introduced to the ponds.

The reclamation involves spraying a pond with rotenone, a fish pesticide derived from plant roots, to kill all the fish in a pond, and then restocking with the fish the department wants: in this case, brook trout.

"It's relatively expensive, so we don't do it a lot," said John Boland, a fisheries biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. "We steer clear of it on ponds that have camps on them."

And the department has had good news from both ponds.

"I fished Broken Bridge with a friend about two weeks ago, and we had great luck," Boland said. "We probably caught between the two of us a dozen brook trout that ranged from 10 to 16 inches."

Boland said the fishing on the Wild River also has improved over the past few years.

"Prior to six or seven seasons ago, the hatchery truck would take a bunch of fish up and the hatchery driver would stop and dump them, and that was it," Boland said. "Now some Forest Service employees who have an interest meet the truck and spread them out, making eight or nine different stops."

Boland said one of the employees of his office has a lot of luck with brook trout and rainbow trout on the Wild River.

Pat Nasta, an assistant ranger with the Androscoggin District of the national forest, said one fisheries project the forest service has done is to cable trees into Evans Brook, a major tributary of the Wild River, to create deep pools and provide cover for the fish. No one has done a scientific study yet, but Nasta thinks it has helped, and Boland agrees.

"The reason we don't do more of it is that it is very, very labor intensive," Boland said. "It takes a lot of dollars and a lot of time"

Cold River, in the southern end of the national forest, is a beautiful stream, with clear water the state stocks some fish in and, "in all honesty, we don't get a lot of production," Boland said.

Where Cold River does better is outside the national forest, above New Road in Stow where there is difficult access and quite a few brown trout, Boland said. "It's a neat habitat, with not a lot of access, so almost no one uses it."

Patte Brook in Albany has a lot of small, wild brook trout, but not a lot of people fish it.

"Occasionally, if everything goes well, and the beaver dams are right," Boland said of Patte Brook, "we'll see salmon all the way up there from Sebago."

Hunting

Hunters in the Maine section of the White Mountain National Forest go after moose, deer, bear, birds and other small game.

The national forest is part of Zone 12, and about 150 moose permits are issued for that zone, said Philip Bozenhard, a wildlife biologist for the southwestern Maine zone.

"While overall success has been between 86 and 90 percent for the last few years, I would suspect that success rates this far south may be a little lower since the moose population is not as high as that in the more northern portions of the state," Bozenhard said.

Deer hunting now is fair, not as good as it was 40 to 50 years ago, but not as bad as it was in the 1980s.

"There have been several hard winters during the last five to six years," Bozenhard said, "and with the increased cutting of deer wintering areas, deer numbers have been not able to rebound as well as they have in the southern and central portions of the state."

Hunters also go after small game such as partridge and snowshoe hare as well as black bear.

"There is considerable bear hunting that goes on in the forest," Bozenhard said.

He added that while there are turkeys in and around the forest, he doubts there is much turkey hunting because of the low population and the high percentage of forest habitat.

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