Gear, Casting, Fishing, Fly Tying

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Fishing Aroostook County, Maine

The Introduction to Fly Fishing course at Jack Mountain is for those who want to do more than skim the surface, it’s a comprehensive weekend course built to install the foundation of fly fishing with the goal of sending every student home to with the tools, techniques and most importantly, the confidence to get out on their home waters and catch fish.

There are numerous short fly fishing programs out there that will put a rod in your hand while a well versed instructor will talk at you (and a large group of your new best friends). You’ll probably pick up some mildly useful tips, but you didn’t have the time to learn the skills, get one on one instruction, have everything from chalk talk lessons to casting pond practice to real world, on the water fishing. Only through the guided application of skill can you become proficient, and that is the Jack Mountain difference.

This 2 ½ day course gives each student the time to complete the learning process with ample time for reflection, deeper dives into questions and topics, and the “I was wondering as I was going to sleep last night” questions that come up after a full day of learning. We’re here for all of it!

We begin on Friday morning at 8am with a general overview of the gear, the how’s and why’s of fly fishing as well as base line skill development like knot tying and gear set up. From there we hit the casting pond to work on roll casts, over head casts and retrievals. The rest of day one is spent on the Aroostook River just down the hill from our campus where we learn to read moving water, identify likely fish holding water and we do our first dive into aquatic entomology. From there students are let free until dinner to fish, cast, and socialize on the beautiful Aroostook River.

Day two brings morning review and Q/A time and another short lesson at the casting pond before we pack up to spend a full day on nearby rivers where we will fish for native brook trout. Throughout the day there are continued lessons on everything from reading river to landing and safely handling and releasing fish. Back at camp you’ll get a guide- favorite dutch oven dinner. After dinner we offer optional fly tying sessions for anyone who wants to dive deeper.

Day three is a mixed bag of either flat water fly fishing, skills and drills around camp (casting pond and the Aroostook) or another day on nearby smaller streams. We intentionally leave day three more open to student interest and on the productivity of the prior days fishing. Day three ends at noon.

What to Expect:

Each day will run 8am-5ish. Typically we meet up around 7am for coffee and socializing and we keep you busy until you’re ready to call it for the day. We believe in providing you the best and most comprehensive experience over the 2 ½ days- so plan on going strong all day.

We will be outside for more or less the entire course. Morning classes are held in our 3 sided pavilion, which does offer some protection from the elements, but plan on dressing for the weather. Northern Maine in May can be 75 and sunny or 45 and rainy. Black flies and mosquitoes can be out too so if you are the person who always seems to get eaten by bugs, bring a head net and plenty of bug spray.

What You’ll Learn:

Fly fishing gear selection, use, maintenance, and repair. This includes rods, reels, waders, boots, lines, flies, bags, nets and odds and ends.

Casting: roll cast, improved roll cast with D loop, over head casting, false casting, mending and line retrieval.

Reading water for fish- both moving and flat water.

Aquatic entomology related to fly fishing. How to find the bugs, ID them, and use them to choose the appropriate fly.

Wading: how to safely wade, when to wade, and how to wade to approach fishable water.

Fishing etiquette: being respectful to the fish, other fisherman and the environment.

Fly tying- you’ll learn to tie three flies that will catch fish around the world.

What you’ll need:

Everyone will need a complete fly fishing setup including rod, reel, lines and flies. We also strongly recommend each person brings a pair of waders and wading boots. Upon registration, Paul will contact you to go over any gear needs you have. Complete fishing sets can be rented for the weekend and flies can be purchased from Paul.
For personal gear:

We offer space to tent camp, park a camper or crash in your truck. It’s totally up to you where you sleep over the weekend, but we do not offer any indoor sleeping options. In the event of really inclement weather we do have an indoor space for our classes that can house some folks at nights.

We will be providing dinner on Saturday night. You will be responsible for all other meals. We recommend keeping meals simple, quick and easy. All of our cooking at camp is outdoors over fire which adds time to the meal prep and cleanup. If you would like, you are welcome to bring a camp/backpack in style stove to heat food with. Ultimately, we’d rather spend out time fishing instead of cleaning dishes. Plan on easy breakfasts and lunches that don’t require cooking.

Fishing Gear:

If you are going to bring your own gear for fishing, here is what we recommend:

Rod- 9’ 5 weight. You can get away with 8’ 6” and a 4,5, or 6 weight, but a 9’ 5 wt. will be perfect for the water we’ll be fishing.

Reel- Doesn’t need to be anything fancy, just a reel that matches your rod in weight.

Line- You want a weight line that matches your rod, i.e. a 5 wt line if you have a 5 wt rod. Weight forward floating line will cover all the fishing styles we’ll be learning.

Waders and boots- Again, they don’t need to be fancy, just waterproof waders and the boots should have a sole meant for fly fishing, so either felt or fishing-specific rubber.

Flies- You’ll want a good selection of dries, nymphs and streamers meant for northern Maine and/or brook trout fishing.

Sunglasses- We require everyone to be wearing glasses while they are casting. One hook in the eye and your day is over. Get polarized glasses while you are at it, you’ll be able to see the fish better and you’ll save your eyes from UV light on the water.

Odds and Ends- You’ll want a bag to carry all your gear in, you’ll want some leaders and tippet and a strike indicator or two. A net is nice to have also. Don’t stress the small stuff though, I always bring enough to cover the group.

For More Information: Episodes 111 and 112 of the Jack Mountain Bushcraft Podcast featured Paul talking about simplifying fly fishing. Listen here: Episode 111, Episode 112.

Travel Information and Directions:   Travel information is located here. After you register you will receive local driving directions to our site.

Accommodations:   Bring a tent, tarp, or other shelter. It will be your home for the week. For summer programs please consider bringing a bug net if you don’t have noseeum netting on your tent. There are also cabins available through Blackwater Outfitters, located five minutes away. They can be reached at: 207-540-4101.

Meals:   For information on food and meals, visit our Food and meals page.

Cancellation and Refund Policies:   Please visit our School Policies page for information on all of our policies.

Salmo salar or Surviving the Spring Flood

Spring floods require us to hold on to root and rock while the once trustworthy solid ground, like sand at the beach under our toes is getting eroded out from under us and flushed out to the ocean. Rivers swell and fill in ravine and swale, forming tendrils that reach out from the main current and attempt to pull the covers off the land like two lovers in bed locked in a nocturnal battle for the blankets. Amidst this undressing, the landscape becomes temporarily aquatic, a place where rivulets careen down footpaths, submerge spring ephemeral wildflowers and fill deep hidden pools whose dark tannic water lies in wait to engulf a distracted fisherman up over his chest waders. One must mosey with care this time of year lest you lose your footing and end up getting swept over long-forgotten grist mill dams and through rusty highway culverts on your long swing back to the ocean. You wouldn’t be alone should you go for a long swim this time of year, although like driving against rush hour traffic, you may see more headlights than taillights.

As you slip into the water that up until recently was locked up in it’s solid, hibernatory phase you feel the bone aching cold that slows your blood down to that of the brown trout you find parked in calm eddies behind rock and log, snatching small aquatic insects in free drift but who are not really warm enough to work too hard for that meal. The cold water thickens life, it thickens sounds and soul too bringing every action and movement into question of worth as in “is this really worth the discomfort to be fishing right now?” It’s the first of May but my hands are numb, it’s been raining all day and I’m beginning to shiver. I have spent many days in cold water and, just like beard frost in the winter, I use my body as a thermometer. Today I’m guessing by the ache in my legs that the water is around 40 degrees, although since the air temperature is only 39 and I’ve been wet all day the integrity of my inner thermometer may be off a few degrees.

You get used to it though, or maybe your pain receptors, no longer receiving any new stimuli are switched into their off mode. I have felt this in natural hot springs where the water was hot enough to cause pain and an elevated awareness of life, or at least an elevated awareness of your sometime faulty decision making process. When you’d slide into the hot water it’d hurt for a half minute then, as long as the water stayed perfectly calm you’d slip into a state of heat- induced meditation that lasted until someone else entered the pool and made some waves or you committed to making a mad dash out of the pool when you’d reached your cooking temperature. Hot water, cold water- it’s all the same to us, but not to the fish.

You are making your way downstream, neutrally buoyant in the water, passing suckers full of small peach- colored eggs the size of half a pencil eraser. They are heading up to their gravel beds to spawn, giving life to future suckers as well as to the trout and salmon who feast on their eggs and the eagles who are better fisherman than I. I found a sucker mostly eaten by some large bird, osprey or eagle probably, on the sandy river bank surrounded by the golden blobs of her egg sacks like the halo around the Virgin Mary or the long blonde hair of Botticelli’s Venus. I’m not sure why the eggs were left uneaten, I assume it was the eagle giving me a chance to see the size and color of the sucker’s eggs so if I were so inclined I could tie on an appropriately sized and colored egg to my fly line and catch a trout or two unawares to my avian-inspired knowledge.

As the river slows from the frenetic white water pace upstream and enters a lower gradient meander to the ocean, you pass the ghosts of salmon, Atlantic salmon that used to clog the small river by the hundreds of thousands and push my comfort limits of fecundity and life. Fish by fish the runs shrank. Some were caught by the ton off shore for food by us and other nations. Others were choked out by rising water temperatures and lower oxygenation. Some were impeded by dams that placed impassable barriers between the ocean and the clean cold gravel beds some hundred miles upstream. A couple hundred years ago you would have been pushed back up river by the amorous rush of fiscian love, now you only pass a few lone survivors, salmon that avoided the “black hole” of salmon mortality in the Atlantic where scientists don’t really know why juvenile salmon are failing to return from their few years of life in the open ocean.

They are hatchery fish, these salmon I see now, raised in the headwaters and planted by various means in the same gravel beds the wild running fish used to come back to. I caught a couple yesterday, 14” flashes of silver that looked like puppies in a pet store; innocence born out of simple, blissful ignorance. They have yet to breath the tangy salt water or see the real life ahead of them. They swim with hope, hope that they will have a life we can relate to: a safe childhood, a place to grown and learn and a home to raise a family. The salmon I saw were like middle school age kids. Sure they had probably chased each other around and taken a few token pot shots at some smaller suckers but they were good fish, fish that were on the brink of a big adventure, an adventure we’re pretty sure they won’t come home from. The chance of truly living doesn’t come with high success rates for anyone, only around 1% if you’re an Atlantic salmon whose home river is in southern Maine.

The water warms past head tide, the fresh water is replaced by a tidal rush that pulls you out to the open ocean. While you’re out there maybe you could ask around and find out where the salmon are going who don’t make it home. Maybe you’ll decide after a few years it’s time to come back home. Where the river grows small and cold and tunneled by cedar and hemlock you’ll see me again, shivering in leaky waders, dead drifting a #12 Hare’s Ear Rubber Leg and a #16 Pink Frenchie through the deeper runs. Maybe you’ll just see my boots as I bend over a small birch sapling adorned with those same flies and hear my muttering about the state of my fishing affairs. Just like yesterday, I’ll stop fishing for the day when I know you’re down there, you have a rough go of it and the last thing you need is to be pestered by a half- frozen human. I’ll just sit on the bridge eating cold chicken parmesan and drinking equally as cold coffee in the late afternoon drizzle, imagining the river filled bank to bank with your ancestors and trying to make out your shape in the dark water below, enviously imagining the travels you have in front of you.

Flying Fish

Last night I just about got snarky. A few months ago I posted a grip and grin style fish selfie with a mid range rainbow caught on what proved to be the best day out of 14 or so I spent fishing around the Livingston area in south central Montana. It was one of those fishing trips where on at least one occasion I came to the point of asking myself if I really enjoy fly fishing or if it has become merely a life consuming obsession filled with hours of self doubt, self loathing and confidence crushing refusals but that is also mercifully pocked with occasional bouts of elation. While that mental road is one we all must go down once and a while my frequent paying of that toll left my spiritual tank riding near “E” and the thought of donning waders for another cold, windy and underwhelming day of nymphing did not exactly have me firing out of bed in the morning. So let’s just say the one day that had the pre-spawn rainbows eating heartily left me giddy and ready to prove to the world (and myself) that I do indeed know how to catch a fish, a sentiment that a day before was like the rainbow, up in the air. So there you have it, a fish suspended up in the air looking perplexedly at the camera, and yes, being forced to suck air for a few seconds while my numb fingers groped awkwardly on my phone for the camera app.

The Selfie in Question
Here comes the snarky part, a good friend posted the comment “keep ’em wet” in reaction to my aerial fish picture, which is all well and good and his sentiment is hard to argue with- fish like water and it’s better for all parties involved if that’s where they stay, but it got me ruffled for reasons that seemed to supersede my typical vestigial teen angst. I replied does drawn butter and lemon count as “keeping ’em wet?” But his point is a good one: we all could probably do well to think a little more about our actions more when we’re out on the water.
After the initial visceral rush of undirected “you can’t tell me what to do” irrationality subsided, I had to admit that he’s right, its the same reason we use rubber nets, barbless hooks and lead free split shot, because we care. Can fish handle the air time? Sure, just as we can handle at little underwater time. Can we at times, like saying goodbye to a friend, prolong the moment for too long until both of us are uncomfortable? Undoubtedly. Does the world need another trout-gun pic? Hmmmmm.
The asking of questions often necessitates the researching of facts, which by the time those facts make it to the river are often confuddled and confabulated like the old game “telephone” and are reduced to nothing more than some arcane statistics like the random percentages thrown around as to how much trout feed subsurface in relation to from the surface. We talk about mortality rate percentages of caught and released fish with one of the causes of death after release coming as a result of fisherman trying to hasten evolution by holding the gasping trout out of the water for too long expecting them to miraculously start breathing air. While is it not as taxing to the fish as a prolonged fight especially in warm water, it should be safely assumed by anyone with a middle school level understanding of biology that the timer starts ticking the moment that fish begins its atmospheric adventure. Whatever the statistic I think we all can agree that trout have better places to be than playing superman. On a similar but tangential thought, you think fish are afraid of heights? I mean, there is no height in water only depth and there is no falling down in water as I have proven time and again there sure as hell is on land. Maybe just to be safe we should hold the fish closer to the water so as not to inflict any acrophobic induced psychological damage as well.
A few days ago I saw a picture of a beautiful Atlantic salmon my commenting buddy caught, which to be fair was still in the water when the picture was taken but it got me thinking it seems funny to care so much about the 10 seconds we haul a fish out of the water for a pic but not about the 5 or more minutes we spend pulling the fish around by a sharp piece of steel piercing its head. Maybe instead of saying “keep em wet” we should be saying give that poor fish an aspirin cause that hole in its face has to hurt a whole lot worse than a few breaths of air. It’s interesting how we chose to accept one form of inflicted discomfort/pain as unavoidable or “part of the deal” but then we make a big stink out of what is essentially just an effect of the cause. In the end if we really cared about the welfare of the fish we should probably just stay home, but that isn’t an option now is it?
As a writer always needing a new idea to put to ink, or 1’s and 0’s, I am forced to sometimes plumb depths that I’d rather not on account of what bits of scary matter may come up in the gill net. I got to thinking about the question I posed above, what’s worse for the fish, a piece of impaled facial steel or a bit of air time? As someone who has had a few facial piercings, which now seems comically appropriate as a fisherman, I can tell you with full faith that a sharp metal rod through any part of your mouth will leave you instantly rethinking your life choices, but I am no fish and fish are no man.
This question got me researching the web for answers that, like the soon to be victim in a horror movie who the opens the cellar door and without turning on the light starts to slowly descend one creaky step at a time into their imminent doom had my inner self screaming “STOP, STOP now before its too late.” Like the slasher victim, I kept descending until I waded past the point of no return, past the point of being blissfully ignorant in my conviction that while they are animate beings, fish are without the ability to feel pain as we do. To use a cliche, I was about to open that one lady’s magical box, and once it was opened I would never be able to put back the knowledge that came out. I was prepared for the worst, but what I found was even more surprising.
I will save you the freshman BIO 101 grade research paper here, but after reading a slew of articles from various academic, scientific and a couple obviously end-of-the-spectrum organizations here is my synopsis:
Fish feel pain, but not like we do, we think, probably
*Divergence. A few months ago my old pup Arlo, after 16 ½ years finally gave up his job as protector of me and tormentor of small mammals and passed on. Before the cancer got him I was engulfed in the whole “are you keeping him alive for your sake or his” debate about end of life care. I chose to extend his by what tuned out to be a great couple weeks, but the whole event brought out the conversation with a few friends about the transposition of human emotions onto other animals. For instance, I was accused of prolonging his suffering by not putting him down. I replied that we can’t use human emotions like suffering to understand how other animals are experiencing life because unlike tangible feelings like pain, hunger and fear we have no way of empirically testing and interpreting and therefore understanding what other animals are experiencing. Pain gets a response we can measure, so does hunger but emotions like happiness, joy, and suffering all are combinations of physical responses in tandem with other human emotions and human experiences. So do I think dogs feel happiness? Maybe, but maybe not, I mean I know what appears to be a parallel to what we call happiness in our lives with what I see in dogs, or maybe they are just acting that way because we feed them and keep the dreaded vacuum cleaner locked away. While I know this is a wildly complicated subject, it is important to be able to see that distinction between words like pain and suffering because it may just be the distinction we need to lean on philosophically in order to keep hooking fish knowing the pain it might cause. Divergence over*
Back to my synopsis, fish feel pain, but not like we do. If you take the current research out there, barring any new late breaking study, the common consensus is that fish, like us have nerve endings which transmit sensations to the brain. Where is gets fuzzy is when you start looking at the brain end of the deal, specifically in fish which do not have the same neuro-physiology we do and also lack a certain type of nerve fiber necessary for the transmittal of the sensation of intense pain. So they feel some pain, but not like us, kinda. Studies have shown that fish react to pain stimuli, but does that mean they feel pain? Some people point to the practice of ringing a bull’s nose, which I bet is painful as all get out and is why they follow you around when pulled by the ring. If a trout was in pain, wouldn’t you think it would just go with your pulling instead of performing half gainers and peeling line off your reel? If you need an answer, most people agree they feel some facsimile of pain, but where we leave the fish behind is in our psychological capacity to make any pain way worse but adding psychological trauma from past pain to the present moment. This is getting long winded.
Fish- May feel some type of pain but since they don’t think like us it probably isn’t as bad as it would be if I hooked you in the lip and drug you around town.
Us- Feel pain and our brain box makes it worse thinking about how bad it hurts, how bad it will hurt, how much this pain will affect our life and how much it’ll cost to get fixed.
All of this research and soul searching left me antsy and in need of some space to think, so I grabbed my waders and a rod or two and headed out for some quiet time on the water (irony duly noted). For my part I have always treated the fish I catch with modicum of respect and care, after all, regardless of how they got into their current predicament they are still a living being that deserves to be treated as such. My friend’s comment also got me thinking more creatively about how I capture that moment on film. So instead of the played out grip and grin shot I have been trying to tell a different story with my lens, say maybe by just capturing some fish and some water while the fish is still breathing liquids or by getting a waterproof camera case and taking the picture to the fish instead of the fish to the picture. If you really need that ‘human holding a fish’ pic, be quick, don’t selfie it because it’s always tougher on the fish and the shot is usually horrid. Body mounted cameras are a cool option, so is a tripod or a fishing buddy willing to put down his gear to take a pic for you.
To live is to live with hurt, as the Buddha says “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” While I don’t relish the role as the inflicter of pain, I do relish the trout’s role of inflicter of joy. Someday I will probably be that guy who clips the bend off his flies and just lives for the take without the need for pain, joy and a good long fight. At that point maybe I will no longer need to fish, hell, maybe I’ll just want to sit on the bank and watch the afternoon subvaria hatch. For now I think I need the pain from the fish, I need that reality, that truth that the world hurts and someday it’ll be our turn to get fooled by a well dressed dry fly. Each of us must take the knowledge of our actions and do with it what we feel is right. If you feel the pain fishing causes isn’t worth the joy, then it may be time to put your rod down, or seek medical help, they can probably fix that problem. But for the rest of us we need to balance the books, with the pain in the fish there must come joy in you and if there is joy in you then the world will benefit, except for those days when you don’t catch a damned thing and world around you suffers while the trout swim away pain free.